7 attacks against us: part 4: believing, love & hope
May 30, 2017
Romans 15:13
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
This verse was already covered in part 2, so we’ll briefly summarize and go much farther.
The God of hope wants us to be filled “with all joy and peace in believing”, so joy and peace are essential ingredients of believing. Therefore, if you remove joy and/or peace, you no longer have believing according to God’s word.
Definition of “peace” in Romans 15:13:
Strong’s Concordance #1515
eiréné: one, peace, quietness, rest.
Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine
Phonetic Spelling: (i-ray’-nay)
Definition: peace, peace of mind; invocation of peace a common Jewish farewell, in the Hebraistic sense of the health (welfare) of an individual.
HELPS Word-studies
1515 eirḗnē (from eirō, “to join, tie together into a whole”) – properly, wholeness, i.e. when all essential parts are joined together; peace (God’s gift of wholeness).
Romans 8:35
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
The purpose of these first 2 attacks listed in Romans 8:35 [tribulation and distress] are to break your believing down in God and his word.
Definition of “tribulation” from Romans 8:35:
pressure (what constricts or rubs together), used of a narrow place that “hems someone in”; tribulation, especially internal pressure that causes someone to feel confined (restricted, “without options”).
2347 /thlípsis (“compression, tribulation”) carries the challenge of coping with the internal pressure of a tribulation, especially when feeling there is “no way of escape” (“hemmed in”).
Definition of “distress” in Romans 8:35:
a narrow space, great distress, anguish
(figuratively) a difficult circumstance
What happens if you step on a chocolate chip cookie?
A chocolate chip cookie will break into pieces under pressure, just like our believing in God can, unless we strengthen ourselves with God’s word.
It breaks into many small pieces from the stress, pressure, and impact, just the opposite of the meaning of God’s peace in Romans 15:13.
The goal of the world is to break down our believing in God by pressure and distress.
Remember this infographic from the last article?
Now we will dig deeper into it for another level of understanding.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid with Romans 8:35 overlay
This pyramid with the Romans 8:35 overlay illustrates the order of attack: first the spiritual, then the psychological, then the physical.
But there are more ways the world can break down our believing that we need to know about.
II Corinthians 2:11 [amplified bible]
To keep Satan from taking advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
Once we know how our enemy works, then we can be trained and prepare for victory instead of defeat.
The subject of how the world attacks our believing, love and hope is actually part of a different series of articles called the fall of man that I’ve been thinking about for some time, so this series and that one have a piece in common.
So rather than write the same article twice, I will simply link you to part 2 of the fall of man, and go to part 5 of this series next month. I will then have to finish the fall of man series by making part 1 asap. Crazy, I know.
While making the 7 attacks series, I didn’t foresee all this coming, so you just have to be flexible in your plans. It’s generally better to write part 1 before writing part 2… 😉
