We must look up, for in times like these our very lives may depend on it.

A Christian friend of mine told me recently that, in his prayers, the Lord was showing him that a spirit of weariness was being sent by the devil into our lives and the lives of our churches, through the pressures and the bad news that surrounds us. Its aim is to get our minds and our eyes off the word of God by bombarding us with negative forces. Its aim is to get us to look down at defeat instead of looking up at Jesus. If we let this happen, we will lose the victory that Jesus has won for us; and the word of God tells us that we will then be "wearied, and faint in our minds".

Jesus put it this way, in Mark chapter 4: He said that when the cares of this world enter your heart, they will choke the word and cause it to become unfruitful. And since faith can only come by hearing the word of God that means that faith will wither. Once that happens, we quickly become pulp in the devil's hands. We can beat our brains out and we have no longer any power to fall back on. This is when we fail and when we fall. What can we do?

So what is the answer? What can we do to stop this chain of weariness, as an individual and as a church? The answer is LOOK UP! We must quickly get our eyes back on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Even as every sportsman knows that once the head is lowered, the battle is lost. Look to Jesus instead of to the bad news in the papers. Consider what God says in his word. Let his thoughts become our thoughts. So the doctor says it is hopeless? The bank says you'll never make it? The news says the church is falling, failing, dying, irrelevant... What does God's word say? We must take our eyes off our circumstances and fix them on Jesus. Get our heads up instead of down. God is up! Jesus is up! The devil is down- beneath our feet. So look up! (Read Isaiah 40 v 21-31)