How do we as those who want to follow Christ and Christ alone strengthen ourselves in the things of Christ, and repel those who seek to turn us away from Christ? Three words:
Build. Pray. Wait.
First, build yourselves up in the most holy faith. Here’s the connection back to Jude 3, where Jude told us to “contend for the faith, once and for all delivered to the saints.” This contending is not simply to contend against those around you, but its to contend against ourselves and our flesh that, by its nature, wants to seek and serve self rather than Christ. So you build yourself up. How?
Get in the Word! Read it! Study it! Journal it! When you study, don’t look for such deeper meanings to be clever. We don’t need clever, we need clarity! God intended for His Word to be understood. And by the Holy Spirit, we can understand it because the Holy Spirit illumines hearts and minds to understand His Word. And why wouldn’t we want to? There is no way we can know the particulars of God’s nature and work apart from Scriptures. And the whole purpose of His work is to send His Son into the world to seek and save the lost!
I came across a number of helpful sayings to reinforce this:
The only way to keep a broken vessel full is by keeping the faucet turned on.
There are two ways to study the Bible: Studying it with your mind made up, or studying it to let it make up your mind.
Pray in the Holy Spirit. What does this mean? Thanks to certain religious programming, many believe now that ‘praying in the Holy Spirit’ means speaking in tongues. But that’s not what Jude means. He is speaking of praying in harmony with God’s revealed Word and his agenda. This here distinguished the true believers from the false. Remember how they were ones who followed their own desires? These false teachers and false ‘believers’ if you will followed their own agenda rather than the Spirit’s.
Now, does this mean that we only pray when we know for sure what God’s will is? No! Romans 8:26-28 again is helpful:
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because[g] the Spirit intercedes for the saintsaccording to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,[h] for those who are called according to his purpose.
We have a limited vantage point when we pray. There is a big difference between being at the trailhead of a 14er and on the peak of one. But as Psalm 50 says, “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills’—and we could add that he owns the hills as well! We don’t know what to pray all the time. We know what God has revealed in His Word, but we don’t always know how to apply it all to our particular situation. The Spirit does—and he intercedes for us according to the will of God. That’s why we know that, for Christians, everything works according to His purpose and plan. So, dear Christian, pray in the Spirit.
Wait for the mercy of Christ that leads to eternal life. What does this mean? It means that Christ will come to deliver us! Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18:
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
We know what awaits us, so we wait with patience, staying strong in what Christ has for us, regardless of what the enemies from without and within bring our way.
Build. Pray. Wait.
May God help us and strengthen us each step of the way in Christ Jesus.