Remember, God wants to train our hands for battle so that we can fight a good fight! We were talking about the Prophet Elisha, who was sick and dying (2 Kings 13). He told King Joash to open the window to the East and shoot the Lord’s arrow of victory. Then he told the king to take the arrows and strike the ground. The king struck three times and then he stopped. It says that Elisha was angry because of what the king of Israel had done. He said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times, and then you’d have struck down Syria until you’d destroyed it. But, now you shall strike Syria down only three times.” Do you know that there’s been a lot of dialogue with Syria about the red lines crossing in the sand? Well, here’s another line. Elisha dies, and the Syrians attack Israel, again.

God is trying to train our hands for battle, so we can fight the good fight. Your hands touch things and they deliver things; they receive things and they accomplish work. Your hands are instruments that God uses. God said that he’s going to train your hands. There’s a difference between teaching and training. I read a report that said the number one cause of church growth in America, today, is due to training. Training in every area of ministry: ushers, nursery, worship team, etc. Training in every aspect of the church has become the key component of how to get the church to grow.

We’ve spent a lot of time teaching people, and when we do that, we leave it up to them to apply it, understand it, comprehend it, and to do something with it. But, when you train somebody, that’s different. The military doesn’t teach, it trains. The church is full of theory, today, and we teach a lot of things. But, there’s no training to it that helps people apprehend the thing they’ve been apprehended for.

So, God says, “I’m going to train your hands for battle, to fight the good fight.” This is our spiritual battle. It’s spiritual warfare. We are in that time. There are two strategies of spiritual development that we’ll look at. We’ll go back to these two stories: Elisha in 2 Kings, and we’ll go to David, and his declaration in Psalm 18.

I don’t care who you are or what you’re doing, there is warfare around you.