The Advent of Power

As we draw near to Christmas, we often see nativity scenes and sing songs that reflect on little baby Jesus. There is nothing wrong with drawing up beside the manger and gazing in wonder at God wrapped in the skin of a helpless, human baby. It is good and right that we wonder at His humility and this miracle.

But there is another side to this story.

The miracle of the incarnation is a moment of incredible power. It was a decisive event in the destiny of the universe, the turning point of history.

When Christ emptied Himself of His divine power and knowledge He performed a deed of breathtaking heroism. His submission in the incarnation was a heroic act of faith, and a dramatic step   in the war in heaven.

The Apostle John was given a vision of what was happening on a cosmic level in the birth of Jesus. He records his vision in the 12th chapter of Revelation. John saw Satan, the enemy of God and of man, trying to prevent the birth of the Christ child and to destroy him, but God preserved the baby's life and Satan was defeated. Notice that he was defeated at the birth of the child.

The birth of Jesus was a military victory in the battle between good and evil.

Is it any wonder that when the angels ambushed those unsuspecting shepherds that they were armed for battle. Luke describes the shepherds as being scared by the appearance of one angel, but imagine their terror when the sky is opened and they were suddenly confronted by a contingent of the heavenly army. One messenger angel was terrifying, I can't imagine the fear inspired by an angelic war host.

The Christmas story is not just about a humble carpenter and his virgin bride in a stable in Bethlehem. There is much more going on there than the simple surroundings would indicate.  This is a momentous occasion of great cosmic importance. The armies of heaven were literally present in Bethlehem that night. Only the shepherds got to see them, but they were there.

The lonely couple far from home, giving birth to this little baby, and laying him in a feeding trough were playing their part in one of the most powerful and pivotal moments of all time.

I wonder what is going on right now? What is God doing around us and through us if we could only see it?

Where do I get my magic sword?

A battle of epic proportions is raging around us.  A life or death struggle.  People have left their families behind, have suffered privation as they dedicate themselves to the fight. Every day people are paying the ultimate price in the struggle for victory against an ancient foe, laying down their very lives.  We listen for the orders from our commanders to plug this hole in the line, free those prisoners, or to take that distant hill.  We throw ourselves into the fight.  Some are the commandos dropped in behind enemy lines.  Some are the infantry slogging it out in the trenches.  Some are the stretcher bearers and healers.  Some provide air support or strategic planning.  But, all of us have a role in the battle.

My role these days is mostly air support or, more clearly, prayer support.  I believe that God has called me to devote myself to intercession.  It is difficult for me to watch the battle raging and to see the enemy taking shots at our people.  I once was down in the trenches and I miss the gritty day to day fighting.  These days I fight differently, in the quietness of my secret place of prayer.  Even so, I am filled with emotions: anger, distress, sadness, and rage as I see the enemy of our souls fighting against my compatriots.  I see his lies.  I see the way he tricks us into friendly fire, or ambushes us with the sins that so easily entangle.  I wish that I could grab him by the throat and throttle him.  I find the intangible nature of this warfare terribly frustrating.

In the stories, when a huge and nefarious beast appears on the battlefield, the hero reaches for his magic sword, strides forward into battle and slays the hell spawned creature.  I desperately wish that the spiritual battle was that easily won.  I want my magic sword.  I want to destroy the schemes of the enemy, to free the prisoners, to heal the sick, to raise the dead.  I want to see the banner of the Lord lifted high over the battlefield and to hear the righteous battle throng sing the victory hymn to Our Father, Our King.  Paul says that we do not fight as the world fights, but that we have been given divine weapons that demolish strongholds.  The problem is that I don't know how to wield these divine weapons.  I believe that I am learning, but oh how I want to learn more quickly and to wield the weapons more effectively!  I need the King, the Captain of the Host to train my hands for battle!

What to do

I find myself wondering what to do.  I have been burdened, terribly burdened lately.  Most of the burdens I have been bearing are not my own, but those of people that I love.  As a minister, I am involved in the lives of people, and most people, myself included, are broken.  Most of us are not tremendously broken, we manage to go on day to day just fine, we're just a little cracked.  But a few situations lately have led me into the valley of suffering with some friends.  They have been mourning and I have been mourning with them.  I also have tremendous opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice, but recently there has been more mourning.

But lately I have been bearing another burden, a burden with not one name but with many names.  A burden about organizational sin rather than individual sin.  I have seen a creeping evil, an insidious foe arise.  It looks good, it feels familiar, and yet it is wrong.  I struggle how to name the it...institutionalism, deception, selfish ambition, quenching the spirit?  I'm not sure exactly how to name it, but it is clear as day when you see it.   It is like eating horse meat.  It looks pretty similar to beef.  I can't really describe the difference between beef and horse, but you know the difference when it's in front of you.  It is so similar, but it looks a little different, it smells a little different, it tastes a little different.

So here is my dillema...what do I do about what I see.  I have asked God to do something about it.  I asked Him to have others speak up.  They have...but it continues.  I asked Him to expose it, to let others see it.  They have...but it continues.  I asked Him to put a stop to it.  He did not...and so it continues.  Now I am wondering what I am supposed to do.  I know I am supposed to pray, and I am doing that.  I am wondering if I am to do something else, something more active.  Is there not a time to stand up and do something?  Is this such a time for me?  Would it matter if I did?  It's not that I have much to lose, but I don't see much point in investing myself in this fight if it won't do any good.  It is so draining to invest so much energy in intercession, only to see the cogs of soul numbing, God diminishing, machinery continue to chug along.  But how does the machine get stopped if no one stops it?  Is this my fight?

The more I pray about this, the more I feel like my role is more Moses than Joshua.  When the Israelites fought the Amalekites Joshua went into the valley while Moses went up on a hill overlooking the valley.  While Joshua unsheathed his sword and went into battle, Moses stood on the hill interceding for the armies of the Lord.  As much as I want to be down in the valley in the thick of the fight I feel like His call for me is stay up on the hill with my arms lifted in prayer.  So, here I stand, even as my arms grow tired. 

Production and Patience

I find myself torn between two poles.  On the one hand I feel strongly that we are engaged in a battle and that we must be zealous and active in the fight.  On the other hand, I know that God is sovereign and is in control of all things. I was thinking and praying about this as I walked on the beach the morning.  I was feeling SO burdened by some specific situations.  I was moved by the immediacy of the problems and was interceding.  I was begging God to bare His arm and win the victory.  I was on the verge of despair that He could do anything, or would do anything, when I noticed the action of the waves.  The tide was going out, so the waves were not crashing, but instead gently rolling up and down between the rocks and over the sand.  I noticed that the rocks were well worn; some had taken on impossible shapes beneath the steady motion of the waves.  I saw the sand being pushed up and down the beach by the surf.  I saw small pebbles rolling around beneath the water, on their way to becoming sand themselves. It was then I was reminded of the inexorable coming of the Kingdom of God.

God is moving and His Kingdom is coming, but all in His own mysterious time and paradoxical ways.  I feel such an urgency an impatience for God to move!  I want His Kingdom to come and His will to be done NOW!  I don't think this is all bad, but I see that our sense of urgency and activity often leads us to make subtle choices that lead us away from dependence on God.  It seems that what we want is results, people saved, children fed, schools built, churches planted, families transformed, or cultures redeemed.  Being heirs to the industrial and information revolutions, we then set out to design and build systems that will efficiently and effectively produce the results that we need, that we believe God wants to see happen.

Unfortunately, our reliance on these systems and our efforts to perfect them often causes us to lose our way.  Ultimately our goal is not the production of particular results, good though they may be, but rather, as Jesus taught, God's Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.   The reign of God is massive!  It is much bigger and more complex than we can imagine.  We understand very little about the universe we live in, and even less about the God who created it all.  His Kingdom is mysterious and even paradoxical.  It has so many aspects, contains so many interactions, and has so many simultaneously moving parts!  It is organic and dynamic, it cannot be placed under a microscope and dissected to unlock the secrets.  When we attempt to do this, we reduce the movement of the Spirit to the distillation and application of principles.  We lose the life of the Spirit, but we gain the illusion of control and efficiency.

Oh, but we are an impatient people!  The movement of God sometimes takes much longer than we would expect.  The waves are an ineffecient way to shape stones and to make sand.  So, we devise machines.  We research, discover, and apply the laws of physics and harness what powers we can to accomplish our goals.  We are efficient and effective as we improve upon God's methods.  We never equal His grace and beauty, but no matter because we can do it faster.  Unfortunately, there is more to what God is doing with the waves than just making sand, more than we can possibly understand.

When we skip the process to achieve the end we end up missing both.  We can produce sand and gravel from stones, but that is only a small part of what God is doing; one small part of His grand design.  The marvelous interactions of all that is happening on the beach are part of an intricate dance that we can pick apart but never duplicate.  Behind it all is the hidden hand of God.  He calls us to enter in with Him and to take an active role, but also not to overestimate our own prowess or importance.  We are each like one wave on the beach.  We matter, we have a role, but it is all so much bigger than us.  So, we must take our part in the line of waves accomplishing the will of God by measures and asking Him to give us both the patience and the endurance to keep going.

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.