Oorah.

"But it's our maturity, won under pressure, that makes us soldiers."

I DON’T KNOW WHY we see these fiery darts as temporary things, carelessly tossed in our direction, and the shield of faith is a target, held outward. Bullseye. We expect the darts to finish and there to be endless peace. Which will happen. But instead, it is that the darts become weaker and the shield stronger because we are more fearless. What changed a fisherman into a martyr who’d die a gruesome death? How’d he go from weeping at his denial of Christ before His crucifixion to such boldness at Pentecost? This man’s a Galilean, they said around the campfire, He’s been with Jesus. And Peter denied it. These are from Galilee, how do they speak these languages, they said at Pentecost. His town of origin didn’t change, His boldness did.

The darts don’t get smaller, we get taller, broader. Jesus removes our sins from us, as far as the east is from the west, two directions that never meet. His reach is worldwide. Infinite. Nothing escapes the Holy Spirit, not one word spoken, one thought unsaid. It’s why we’re forgiven. He knows what we meant, what we’ll do, who He will make of us. He knows the enemy in such detail. Nothing escapes His purview. Nothing escapes His presence. We have to deny Him the right to be there, and yet, He knows us anyway.

Jesus’ mother was a teen they say when He was born. She barely knew marriage then, much less motherhood. We are told she pondered the things she learned about her son in her heart, meditating on them. We see her standing at the foot of His cross with John the beloved, then again, interestingly enough with Peter at Pentecost. She who nursed the Son of God, was filled with the Spirit of God, He sent to earth. She grew wiser, walked deeper into the truths of God. He didn’t remove hardship from her but made her fit for it.

God removes hardship. He lifts weights, takes our burdens, and cleanses us from sin. He heals our minds and our bodies and fills us with His goodness. We become walking prophets of our destiny. “Prophets are weird,” Minister Dutch Sheets says. He tells a story of a meeting where he wanted to use some unusual example of a staff in his sermon and asked if anyone in the room had one, only to find several of the prophets kept it with them at all times. The strange staff didn’t make them a prophet, hearing God speak and knowing His voice well enough to repeat His words did. This sounds familiar. We should all be at this level. I should be able to walk up to you and say, “The Holy Spirit just told me …” and insert His words, and you not blink.

How do we get to this level? How do we become signposts of God’s deliverance instead of willows weeping over last-minute rains? Are we suckin’ up empty cans of beans or preparing a huge barbeque? We have to choose God over entertainment, choose to read the Word instead of the news. We have to choose love and forgiveness over criticism and gossip. We have to love the unlovely and minister to the lonely. Weep with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice. There’s a time for all of that. But it’s our maturity, won under pressure, that makes us soldiers. And it’s as soldiers that we parry-dodge-thrust the enemy back from strongholds he’s built in people’s lives.

It was Moses who said, “Let my people go,” and Jeremiah who wept over Jerusalem. Zechariah prophesied ten men of many nations would “take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you (Zechariah 8:23).” That Jew was Jesus. David saw the Messiah’s death on the cross and described his bowels melted, his knees out of joint, his heart like wax (Psalm 22:14). And John, sent to live in exile on Patmos, who saw Jesus as the Alpha and Omega and wrote His revelation.

What are we hearing? What are we speaking? Is the shield of faith a surfboard or a TV screen? Or does it bear the marks of the battle we’ve survived, not an ounce of our blood upon it, but all of Christ’s? I’m thinking our gold crowns are earned and worn well, and the scrolls are opened by Him who defeated death so that those He loves, those He’s raised can stand there with Him. There is our privilege. He earned it. We upheld it. The devil felt it and had to watch as an entire army formed one generation at a time. Oorah.

Image by Tim from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com