”Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah………” (Psalm 60:4-12 KJV)
You are expected not only to fly the banner of the Lord but also to display it wherever you go, in your daily interactions, in your home, in your village, in the market place and so on. It is important for us to know that the banner is not our banner, the banner is the banner of the Lord, God is the giver. Those who will display the banner are those who have enthroned Christ as Lord in every aspect of their lives. People want to lift the banner while still walking in partial obedience and while Jesus is not yet the Lord in some aspects of their lives. If he is not the Lord in all, he is not the Lord at all.
In spite of the religious proliferation in the land, the banner is hardly displayed and as long as the banner is not displayed, God’s people will not be delivered. The essence of the display of the banner, according to vs. 5 of our text, is so that God’s people will be delivered from shame, from dishonour, from lack, from bondage of captivity, from recession, from depression, from oppression, from affliction, from diseases, from death and from every unsatisfactoriness of things.
What does it mean to display the banner of the Lord?
- We lift the banner when we allow the glorious light of our Lord Jesus Christ to shine through us, even if the world be dark with sin.
- We lift the banner when we manifest the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit
- We lift the banner when we demonstrate the holiness, the righteousness and the wisdom of the most high God.
- We lift the banner when we manifest Christ.
- We lift the banner anywhere we are called into action.
- We lift the banner when our faith is tested.
- We lift the banner when we are enforcers of righteousness.
- We lift the banner when we command sickness to dissolve and disappear in the name of Jesus.
- We lift the banner when we command demons to leave and they obey.
- We lift the banner when we come against witches in the name of Jesus and they obey.
- We lift the banner when we decide not to compromise our faith.
We are ambassadors of Christ, Christianity must not end in the Church because it did not start there; it starts in the garden of the heart. Today, people have become so churchly that they have missed Christ. One of the weaknesses of today’s Christianity is that it is too Church-centered. People go to the Church to display Christ only on Sunday morning. There is no Church in the home. Any home that is not structured in a way as to promote open heavens is not fulfilling the purpose of marriage. Any home that does not have an active family altar has missed it. You cannot display what you don’t have. It is the Christ in you that is the hope of glory. You have no glory of your own just as the moon does not have any light of its own; all it does is to align itself along the axis of the sun and then becomes a reflection. That is how our lives should be. We are to display the glory of God; we are supposed to align with the purposive will of God so that the light of his glory will shine through us. A very powerful prayer that we ought to pray regularly is “Lord, please fill me with Christ till the world no longer will see me but Christ shining through me, in the name of Jesus.”
TO BE CONTINUED