"A Time To Love & A Time To Hate" - Cathy Hargett

Cathy Hargett - Highway To Zion President/Founder

(Board Member - Love For His People)

Shalom, Shalom, Friends!

The Lord continues to impress on my heart the reality and the intensity of the battle that exists between the people filled with the Ruach ha Kodesh (the Holy Spirit) and the demonic hordes filled with satan’s darkness. 

I am sometimes shocked at how much I hate evil.   “…a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”  Ecc. 3:8 Yet, I am convinced by the Word of the Lord that hating evil is evidence that we belong to God. “Let those who love the Lord hate evil….”  Ps. 97:10 “Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against You?” Ps. 139:21 

I just did not understand how very intense this hatred would become as we see the Day approaching.  If you hate evil bad enough, you will war against it with all His power working in you.  The gauntlet has been thrown down.  The dividing lines are becoming cleaner and sharper. As we go through these end-times battles, we begin to recognize that the "everyday" struggles that we are facing are not simply aggravations of this life but true battles in the spirit realm where we will ultimately see the victory of Yeshua ha Mashiach.  

It gives me hope to embrace this truth and a sense of purpose in the trial.  He often teaches us through the bread of adversity and the water of affliction.  (Isa. 30:20)  I'm beginning to understand this and no longer am I surprised at the fiery trials and I am learning that He is teaching me to rejoice in this participation of His suffering (I Peter 4:12-13) and that endurance itself is his training/his discipline – not in a punitive sense, but in a learning sense.   “Regard your endurance as discipline; God is dealing with you as sons….” Heb. 12:7 CJB

I’m not saying I have it all figured out.  I am saying that I am learning, and I am quiet in my spirit as He teaches me about it. I realize just how “Other” He is.  He’s way up ahead now, as Brother Oswald Chambers mentions in one of his devotionals, and He seems strange at times because He is past finding out.  This Yeshua is also the Warrior King of heaven and we can’t understand the fullness of what this truly means to know that we, too, are in the epic battle of the end of the age.  

My eyes are straining to see what's next....sometimes I get a picture of myself standing in the middle of an intense storm with a barely visible line of troops coming across the horizon, and there is all kind of debris flying by and wind whipping my face so that I can barely keep my eyes open because of the sting of it.  The battle is raging and I can see that satan's hordes are approaching, yet I know and am convinced that the One called Faithful and True is equipping us for the end of these days.  The darkness is encroaching and there is no doubt about it.  

Yes, I hate evil.  I abhor it.  I am steely against it and becoming more strategic with my spiritual weaponry as I watch the enemy infiltrate loved ones, friends and family with his lying deceit and snares placed “just so” to entangle the unsuspecting. 

Yes, the battle is on.   The Holy Spirit Himself is teaching us, just as Yeshua promised – He is showing us these things that are to come – it is awesome in its intensity: "...But when the Spirit of Truth (the truth giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the truth - the whole, full truth.  For He will not speak His own message - on His own authority - but He will tell whatever He hears (from the Father He will give the message that has been given to Him) and He will announce and declare to you the things that are to come - that will happen in the future."  (John 16:13 Amplified Version)

It has taken me some years and many battles to understand that hating evil is His Word to us, remembering that we are not talking about focusing our anger on flesh and blood.  A compelling passage for me is this one in II Peter 2:7-8 about Lot - righteous people are tormented in their souls by this pervasive evil of the world, the flesh and the devil: "and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)...."  II Peter 2:7-8 NIV

Don’t you just “spiritually feel” this verse – knowing what it feels like to be tormented in your soul by what you see in the world around you?   This is how I so often feel these days as we look around at the continual decline of the morality of this world, the degrading acts of lawlessness, with people giving themselves over to the enemy with ever more degrading choices - and such were we before He rescued us and made us His own.  (II Cor. 6:11)

There is another twist to this truth of the righteous hating evil – and this you may or may not be prepared to hear – but evil hates you back.  If you are feeling this coming against you, rejoice that you are on the Lord’s side! If Yeshua, the Righteous One, the One we adore was hated, and we are His followers, it only makes sense to expect that same hatred the enemy has for Him to also come against us. 

Even as I write this, I realize that this whole subject may be too much for many who are still faint-hearted and not ready for such a challenge as hating and being hated!  I’m not so sure myself!  All I know is this – it is true.  There is a difference now, though, as I accept what the Holy Spirit is revealing. It no longer feels “personal”.  I simply know the life to which we are called….a life of absolute and total abandon, the life of a lover and the life of a warrior….fighting the good fight of faith.  Knowing Whose side we are on.  No compromise. 

Oh, God, help us live up to what we have already attained in You. Love God.  Hate evil.  His Light will appear and satan will be destroyed at the splendor of His coming.  (II Thes. 2:8) In the love of the One Called Faithful and True,Cathy

Cathy Hargett
Highway to Zion Ministries, Inc.