What Is It To Be Relentless

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In less than fifty days the Women of Proven Path Ministries will be offering our very first women’s conference. Saturday, August 20th we are praying that many ladies will join us as we dig into the word of God together and seek His face. If you are a woman reading this, I implore you to attend. You won’t regret it!

The name of our conference this August is

RELENTLESS

As we prayed over this conference and sought what our focus should be and what the Lord wanted to use us to share with the women who would be attending we were pressed to focus on faith. Not just any faith, but unwavering faith, as the Holy Spirit confirmed when He brought Hebrews 10:23 to my heart and had Bridgette and I in agreement.

Then we needed a one word title for the conference. As we pondered unwavering faith and how and why we can in a nutshell have it, the word Relentless is what came to mind. This word began to play in my heart through the lyrics of a song… “Your love is relentless.” So I did what we do in our modern day, I googled it.

Relentless:
adjective * re·lent·less * \-ləs\
 
Definition of relentless:
showing or promising no abatement of severity, intensity, strength, or pace
 
Synonyms for relentless:
determined, implacable, unyielding, unappeasable, unflinching, unrelenting

 

Yes! This was it. Relentless. This world, this life, wants us to be the very opposite of this word. What are the near antonyms of relentless? They are: slackening, softening, yielding; impotent, invertebrate, slack, spineless, weak; complaisant, obliging…

Our God has not called us to be slack, or impotent, or spineless, or weak. Nor has He called us to be complaisant. No He has commanded us to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” (Ephesians 6:10). “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). It doesn’t matter the situation or the circumstance we are not to oblige fear.

This morning the Lord brought Psalm 112:7-8 to my heart…

He will not fear evil tidings;
His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
His heart is upheld, he will not fear,
Until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries.

Neither shall she who has become a woman of unwavering faith. She will not fear evil words, fearful news, discouraging information, or despairing communication. Her heart will remain steadfast, RELENTLESS, trusting in her Lord. She will know that her God will uphold her heart and she will not fear, but with her face set like flint she will press on determined, unyielding, and unflinching knowing that her victory is the Lord’s!

The question beloved is how? How shall she become this woman of such unwavering faith? Relentless. How shall we attain to this woman that we know God has called us to be?

We have to know Him. We have to know Him in and through the way He commanded us to know Him… and that is through His Word and THE Word. Os Guinness writes in his book The Call,

With the brief, merciful, and marvelous exception of His Word in human form, God speaks to us in words, and our responsibility, as His creatures is to listen, to trust, and to obey those words… Words are the deepest, fullest expression in which God now discloses Himself to us. So it is in listening to Him, trusting Him, and obeying Him when He calls that we ‘let God be God’ in all of His awe and majesty.

God’s primary call, His address to us, always has two dimensions: summons and invitation, law and grace, demand and offer. Unquestionably the former comes first, yet that side is missing among many followers of Christ today. The result is a casualness in faith and a slackness in behavior that show no sign of having listened to any call from either Sinai or Galilee, let alone Calvary.

If we are to be relentless we have to “let God be God”. We have to know His word and we have to trust Him. We have to respond to His summons to court and plead guilty as charged and accept His invitation for pardon through Christ as we cry out to Him for mercy. We have to acknowledge His law and our inability to keep it as it so plainly and simply points out our depravity and we must receive His grace through faith in the promises of His Word that in Jesus we will be forgiven our transgressions against our God. We have to bow before His demand for righteousness, justice, kindness, humility, and love and accept His offer to provide those things for us if we will just come to Him through the rent flesh of His Son.

Oh precious one, do you want to be relentless? I do. Oh, how I do. I want to be that woman of unwavering faith. I want my face to be set like flint as Christ’s was as He walked the road to Calvary carrying the cross that would bear my sin on His shoulders. I do not want to be shaken by the things of this world. I do not want to be tossed and driven by the wind (James 1:6). I want to be strong in the Lord as I trust in His relentless love for me, knowing that no weapon formed against me can prosper when I am walking in obedience to Him and His Word, knowing that even in death I remain victorious because Jesus overcame the grave, knowing that I am His and because of the cross nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate me from Him ever again.

 

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