The Battle

I believe that God has created me to be a warrior.  I feel most engaged, most alive, when I am conquering something.  I love a challenge.  I have often struggled to understand this part of myself, or to tame this part of myself, but I believe that the Lord has created me this way.  I believe that He is pleased with this part of me.  He calls me to follow Him, and then leads me into battle.

The problem is that the battlefields He leads me to these days are internal and spiritual.  He leads me to battle my flesh and Satan, the enemy of our souls.  He leads me to battle in prayer.  But, these battles are not easily won.  They are never really over.  No sooner do I see a victory in one area, then He calls me to march on.  I want to stand astride the battlefield as the conqueror savoring the victory, but instead I find that the fiendish enemy is not vanquished, but rather has retreated to another field of battle.  So, I march on, but I don't find the sense of conquest or closure that I seek.

Yes, there are moments of victory.  There are quiet celebrations as strongholds fall, but these are tempered by the realization that the grim foe remains and the fight is not over.  I see glimmers of light and shimmering victory against the backdrop of the darkness.  I see how far I have come, and yet more clearly how far I have yet to travel.  My struggle for holiness continues.  This is true in the battle for my own sanctification as well as the battles I fight in prayer for others. 

My struggle in prayer is also clouded by my inability to quantify the victories.  I can see lives change, people come to faith, relationships reconciled, churches planted, strongholds fall, but it is hard for me to see these as a result of my prayers.  I sit in a room thousands of miles removed from those who are in the thick of the fight and wonder if what I am doing is of any real value.  They are the ones on the front lines, perhaps I should be out there with them, where the "real" work is done.  Or, perhaps the real work is prayer.

I was puzzling over this today and was drawn to Exodus 17.  Moses tells Joshua to get ready for battle and to go fight the Amalekites, while Moses heads up on a hill to pray.  Joshua goes out to battle and Moses holds up his arms and prays.  Whenever Moses' arms are up, Joshua and the army of Israel are winning, whenever Moses drops his arms they are losing.  So, who really wins the battle for the Lord that day?

I am tempted to say that Moses did, but verse 13 says that "Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword."  The victory was Joshua's.  Moses had a role to play, a key role, a pivotal role, but the victory was Joshua's.  Or was it?  Perhaps the victory was really the Lord's and Joshua and Moses both played their role.  It was the Lord who brought the victory and both Joshua and Moses fought the "real" battle, but fought in different ways, on different planes.

I'm not really sure how it works.  Some tell us that the "real" battle is spiritual, others that the "real" world is the one we perceive with our senses.  I think that both are equally real, both were created by God.  I find battle in the physical world so much easier to engage in and to understand.  It is hard for me to stay motivated to battle in the spiritual realm.  I have so much to learn.  But, this I know: prayer is important.  God invites us to pray.  He urges us to pray.  He teaches us to pray.  He commands us to pray.  He tells us that our prayers can be powerful and effective.  He gives us examples of prayers that make a real difference through the lives of Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Peter, Paul, and so many others.  Clearly prayer is important.  Clearly we have been given divine weapons to demolish strongholds.

So, today, I wade into the battle again.  I little know or understand the significance or effectiveness of my attempts, but I believe He has called me to this.  Perhaps my childish attempts at battle make Him smile and He empowers them to demolish the unseen enemy.  I hope so.

The Invitation

The invitation is to follow Christ.  He makes no promises about the destination or even what will happen on the journey.  Sure, there is the promise of the ultimate destination when the journey is all over, and there is the promise that He will always be with us on the journey.  Not to minimize these, but what about the everyday promises? What about food on the table and a roof over your head?  What about healthy kids and good friends?  What about the respect of those you admire or those you lead?  What about all the things that we have been led to expect from life, from God?  Does He promise these?

If I believe what the Christian bookstores sell, then yes, He does, but I don't believe them.  I don't believe that "every day with Jesus is sweeter than the one before."  I don't believe that He promises that we will be healthy, wealthy, and wise.  I don't believe that following Him will always lead to light and bliss.  I don't believe that we'll always come out on top (in this world) or that we will be rewarded for doing the right thing.  Sometimes doing the right thing means being executed, or slowly being starved to death.  Sometimes following Jesus leads us into trouble not away from it.  A quick examination of the lives of the prophets, or the lives of the vast majority of Christians in our time and the ages before us, shows us that it is an anomaly to have a nice life and also follow Christ.

So, I reject the "face value wisdom and happy lies" that promise something that Jesus never actually promised.  He did promise that He would be with us.  He promised that He would send us the Spirit to comfort us and to lead us.  He promised that He would complete the good work that He began in us.  Ah, there's the rub.  To complete the good work of redeeming my soul and making me more like Himself, He has to lance the painful, infected, places in my soul.  He has to take me to face the hurt, the darkness, the pain in my own soul.  It's not just that there is sin "out there", that the world is sick and infected and therefore not as it should be and so we suffer in this world.  It's that I am sick and infected and not as I should be. 

So, I choose again today to follow Him.  Not because it will be easy, or will lead to all the worldly happiness that I crave, but because He is God and He is good.  He is good even when He takes me by the hand and leads me down in to valley of the shadow of death.  For dying to myself is a real death with real suffering.  I believe that He inflicts this pain because it is the only way for me to be healed.  I hate the pain, but I love the soul surgeon who inflicts it. 

Who else?

There are times in my journey when I am filled with love for God.  There are times when I just delight in Him and desire nothing more than sitting in His presence.  There are other times when our relationship is less filled with inexpressible joy, and more difficult.  There are times when I really resonate with Peter. Peter was passionate.  Peter was eager.  Peter often spoke impetuously.  Peter was also honest, as honest as he could be.  I love Peter's words in John 6.

Quite a few followers were leaving and abandoning Jesus.  Those who were not leaving were grumbling.  Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them if they are also going to leave.  I love Peter's response.  You might expect that He would declare his undying loyalty.  You might expect that he would declare his love and his faithfulness.  Instead he responds, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

No bombastic declarations.  No prideful self assurance.  No, those would come later, in a different season.  This time he responded with a simple statement about what is true.  They knew that Jesus was the One.  If we read between the lines we see Peter's implication, that if they had another real option, they might well take it. But, because they knew that Jesus was the Messiah and the only way to eternal life, they had no choice but to follow Him.  Who else could they follow?

That is a bit where I find myself in my journey these days.  I am wrestling with God.  I am frustrated.  I am bothered.  But to whom else can I go?  I know too much to leave.  I know that He is and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.  So I seek Him still, even though He says some strange things, even though He asks for difficult sacrifices.  Where else could I go?  Who else has the words of eternal life?  Who else is the Eternal Word?  So, with Peter, I will stay the course and trust that this season too will pass and another one will follow.

Playing with God

This morning I find myself wondering about how to more fully integrate God into the playful side of my life.  I am a pretty playful person by nature.  I like to tease and joke.  I like to play cards and boardgames.  I enjoy video games and computer games.  I generally just enjoy playing.  I know how God's standards inform my choices about leisure activity, that I should only let my mind dwell on things that are true, noble, right, lovely, admirable, and worthy of praise.  It's the actual playing that puzzles me.

I am not struggling with picturing God as happy or joyful, or even laughing, but I am having a hard time picturing Jesus engaging in the kind of  frivolous pastimes that I enjoy.  I can picture Him enjoying creation, or enjoying the joy of His creatures, but I have a hard time picturing Jesus playing football, Playstation, or even checkers.  I can picture Him preaching and praying.  I can picture him serving and healing.  I can picture Him eating and sleeping.  I just can't quite see him playing, and this puzzles me and makes me sad.  Did Jesus ever just take some "down time"?  What did He do for fun?

Over the weekend, my son and I spent hours playing a variety of games together, everything from checkers, to Playstation, to Civilization on the PC.  I can picture God enjoying us enjoying each other, but what about when I just play a game by myself?  Does God smile on that?  Does He enjoy me enjoying the game?  Does He enjoy me enjoying the challenge, the problem solving?  Or does He think it's all a waste of time and that I should be doing something productive, of eternal value?  I know that I need a certain amount of just plain fun in my life, but I find myself feeling guilty about it.  I can't believe that the guilt is from God, but I can't quite dismiss it either.

The Natural and the Supernatural

Being Christ like does not come naturally to me.  I am bent.  I have a predisposition to sin.  Not only that, but I have spent years doing what comes naturally.  I have programmed by body and my soul to respond to certain situations or stimuli in strictly natural ways.  Like one of Pavlov's dogs I hear the "bell" of stress and turn to escape.  I hear the bell of difficulty and turn to procrastination.  I have a natural tendency to turn away from God, and to seek my own way, and I have further strengthened these natural tendencies by developing sinful habits of heart, mind, and body.

Everyone of us has turned away from God.  We turn away from the Fountain of Living Water and dig cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can't even hold water.  I have returned to my cisterns so often that there are now deep ruts leading to them.  It is hard to pull in another direction when my nature and my habitual way of living lead me down the well worn path.  My culture in another accomplice to my crimes.  Our cultures normalize and enshrine our cisterns.  We are surrounded by others not only doing the same things but also giving approval to our choices.  They actively recruit people to drink from the cisterns, and profit off of the enslavement to the natural.

God offers us freedom.  He offers us His very Spirit to live inside of us and lead us to new ways of living.  If we say that we don't need Him we lie.  If we say we don't sin, we lie.  But, if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  From that place of humble surrender and gracious forgiveness He leads us, as often as we need it, back to the Fountain of Living Water. 

As we try to forget what is behind and press on for the prize, He is at work within us to will and to work His good pleasure for us.  The ruts are still there, but He calls us to abandon them, He empowers us to choose the supernatural life over the natural. We are not alone.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  It may always be more natural for me to sin than to live like Jesus, but it is getting a little easier than it used to be.  The road is long, the temptations are great, but greater is He who is in us than He who is in the World.