"You therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." II Tim.2:3
“We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” I Jn. 5:19
“…and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” It is so desperately hard to maintain a proper perspective on this world. Or perhaps better, an eternal perspective on this world. This planet is not the amusement park Satan purports it to be. We are not here to ride as many rides as possible, to feast incessantly on cotton candy, or win the most fleeting prizes possible. We are here to glut ourselves with God. We are here to flaunt His excellencies before others. We are here to meet real needs with concrete good. And we are here to battle. To actually engage in hand-to-hand combat with the forces of darkness; seeking to rescue through the power of God lost souls held captive by the archenemy of our souls on this war-torn planet. To intentionally build into the lives of other believers so that they too become soldiers of the King. We are born for battle. But we so underestimate our calling…and especially the resources for that calling. Annie Dillard puts it so well,
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
” This great adventure and high calling is entrusted to all the people of God, not just church leaders. Charles Spurgeon wrote,
"To be a Christian is to be a warrior. The good soldier of Jesus Christ must not expect to find ease in this world: it is a battlefield. Neither must he reckon upon the friendship of the world; for that would be enmity against God. His occupation is war. As he puts on piece by piece of the panoply provided for him, he may wisely say to himself, "This warns me of danger; this prepares me for warfare; this prophesies opposition."
Amen and amen! Wherever we live on planet earth is foreign soil. We are all on the foreign mission field and our only real home is heaven. “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,” Phil. 3:20 Wherever we live on planet earth is a battlefield. Some battlefields, especially here in America, are easily mistaken for amusement parks. But they are still battlefields. And we are still soldiers.
Flashpoint: We only have one opportunity for all eternity to attack the gates of hell: Right here…Right now.
