Join the Battle

If you are a child of God, do you take a stand for the gospel? Are you in the tough battle? It's hard to be in or stay in the fight sometimes because of the fierce opposition. But until the end, when the battle is finally over and Jesus wins the war, opposition to Him will remain out there in abundance! Jesus promised it and you can be sure it will come when you are standing for the truth. It's difficult sometimes. There will be situations when you face a hostile Jesus hater and you may be afraid to make any waves. There will be times when you face someone who knows their bible backwards and forwards and they twist it and try to use it to prove that the whole Jesus thing is a fairytale, or that Jesus wasn't really God. You may find yourself under attack and feeling inadequate to answer all the bible questions from someone who is trying to trip you up. Or you may come across a church goer who claims the name of Christ but lives like the devil and God calls you to take a stand for the truth. Yes, sometimes the battle is tough. Actually, it's difficult most of the time. If you claim the name of Christ and never have struggles with the enemies of the cross, you better examine yourself to make sure you are really saved or make sure that you are walking in right relationship with your Master. But when you do face those hostile people, there will be times when you want to just lay down and go with the flow, keep your head low, stay buried in the sand. But that is not what Jesus calls His disciples to. He calls us to battle... to war! He tells us to be strong and very courageous. Joshua 1:6,7,9) Our Captain tells us just like He told Joshua in verse 5 that He will not fail nor forsake us. I love the command He gives us in verse 7, just as He did to His servant Joshua. He tells us to do all according to His word, and not to turn from it to the right or to the left, so that we may have success wherever we go. Of course we have to realize that success in the eyes and mind of Jehovah God will not always be something we can see or understand, and we shouldn't try. Just be faithful to follow His leading in your life to His truth, for His honor and glory, and leave the rest up to Him. It's the work of the Holy Spirit to change a person's heart. You just stay faithful and do whatever He calls you to, and trust Him to do the rest. Proverbs 3:5 tells us to trust in the Lord, and do not lean to our own understanding. In all our ways acknowledge Him and He will make our paths straight. That's some pretty heavy duty commands and carrying them out is not for the faint hearted! Not all of the Shepherd's sheep are warriors. Some are scared and timid and are easily shaken. They have to be looked after. Some are like little lambs. I used to consider myself as such and I think often about how timid I was. I was afraid of the whole world. I never wanted to come out from under my bed, and this was when I was 47! I'm now 48. And there are days when I am standing for truth and it is hard and sometimes emotionally draining and I find myself wishing I could just crawl back under my bed. But reading several times through the bible and by the grace of God, growing in the knowledge of my Shepherd, I started longing for more than just the life of a scared little sheep. That longing came from God Himself. I knew that if I stayed a frightened lamb the rest of my life, I would still go to heaven when I died. But God allowed me to see more and more of the fact that it is a battle, a war out there and the warriors are so very few. After I had been saved for about three years, every single time I read Isaiah chapter 6, I couldn't contain my emotions. And by the time I got to verse 8, the tears would be streaming down my face. I wanted to raise my hand so bad and wave it in the air and say "LORD...LORD...here I am!!! Lord, see ME!! Lord, send ME!!" but sheer terror kept my hands by my side and my voice barely above a whisper for months and months. You see, I know how the story ends. It is believed that Isaiah was the prophet that was sawn in half. Hebrews chapter 11 is called the faith chapter. It lists many saints from the Old Testament and talks of their faithfulness to their God. And verse 37 tells us that these faithful warriors of Jehovah were "stoned, sawn in two, tempted, put to death with the sword, they were destitute, afflicted and ill-treated. John the Baptist and Paul were beheaded. Stephen was stoned. All of the disciples with the exception of John were martyred for their faith and devotion to their Master. Peter was crucified. When the time came to die, he requested to be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as His Lord. The bible is full, Old Testament and New, of those who stood for Christ and were killed or at least severely mistreated for it. Is this really what I wanted to sign up for when I could still get to heaven being a precious little lamb that needed the protection of the fierce warriors, and desired to stay hidden under the wings of Jesus? Come on! Besides, I'm a female! Wouldn't that be better suited for just the guys, and us girls can do our part and pray for all of the brave male soldiers of Jesus? And you know what..that's ok. If that is what God calls you to, then do that with all of your heart and pray fervently and faithfully for those on the front lines of the war for our King. But there was just something that kept coming up inside me. Of course that "something" had a Name. God placed the desire inside me and then answered His own calling in my life to step forward. Besides, as He has assured me, what is there to fear? Whom is there to fear? (Psalm 27:1 Actually read the entire psalm if you are in the battle)So that small little slight raising of my hand and that barely audible whisper then progressed to "I think I really do want You to use me Lord, no matter what that looks like, no matter what it entails. It doesn't matter what You have to do with me or do to me Lord, only use me for Your kingdom, Your gospel and Your glory!" I'll tell you something, you better mean it when you say that prayer because you'll find that He will take you up on it. Only by the grace of God did my little whisper turn into an ecstatic, arm-flailing shout. We've all seen on tv or in the movies how people are stranded on a deserted island and nobody knows where they are. And then all of a sudden an airplane flies overhead and everyone is waving their arms frantically, jumping up and down and doing everything they can to get the attention of the one in the air. Well, that was the picture of me! Before long I was joyously giving heart and soul to the desire of being used by God, no matter what He chose as my path for His glory. "Only send me, Lord...use me!" But you can't think that you get to choose your own path. He does all the choosing. And for me, so much of the time it looks NOTHING at all like I thought it might, or dreamed it might. Here I am, my name is signed on the dotted line at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper. But His choices of how He uses me look nothing like I thought they would. You know how you hear stories of people reluctant to give their lives to Christ out of fear that He will send them on the mission field? Well, I have no stronger desire for any other service like my desire to be sent to a country so poor that they have nothing but a life full of hardship and hopelessness. I long to go to a country where there is dire poverty, disease, unclean living conditions, where the people don't even have a roof over their heads. A place where they've never even heard of Diet Coke!! Oh no!! (Did I really just say that?) I long to be in a country where mothers cradle their frail children and can do nothing more than watch their precious babies die of sickness or starvation. A country that is starved for food and clean water and the Word of GOD!! I yearn with all of my heart to live over there and serve my Master all of my days and quickly come to the point where I couldn't even imagine coming back to a home where I get upset when my hair won't cooperate with me on a Sunday morning before going to church to worship my Lord! To live in a country where I had to plead, every single minute of every single day of my life at the throne of grace and mercy to hold fast to, and plead for, my faith in the goodness of a holy God in the midst of such suffering, and plead for it to NEVER waver! To worship side by side with mothers who have lost their only child, or child after child until they are childless and still lift their hands in the air to praise their new-found Savior with joy and thanksgiving in their hearts. But as of today, God hasn't opened a door for me to go on any type of mission trip at all. And the "mission fields" He keeps putting me on here in Memphis look nothing like I would have imagined. Beloved, you don't get to choose the scene of your service in the King's battle. HE chooses the battlefield and which enemies you will fight, all for His glory. Once you sign on the dotted line, it is completely out of your hands and you have no right whatsoever to complain about the things He chooses for you. But do we know better than God? No way! If I never get to leave Memphis on even a short-term mission trip, God is still God, and He is good always, and His decisions are perfect, holy, and righteous! In the end, if I remain faithful to my Captain, I will hear the words every child of His yearns for, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" If I do His bidding and serve Him faithfully all my days no matter what that looks like, I will enter into the tremendous joy of my Lord and heaven will be even that much sweeter.
While you have been reading this, has your heart been burning inside you? It doesn't matter if you are a male or a female. It doesn't make any difference whether you've been saved a day or twenty years. Jesus said in John 10:27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." If you are one of His sheep, then you know the voice of your Shepherd. Is He calling you to come out of your comfort zone and be one of His warriors in His mighty battle? You know His voice. You sense His calling. You feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit inside you. Maybe you heard it years before over a long period of time and you ignored it. Maybe you are hearing that call for the first time and you know it is your Captain calling you into battle. Even if you can only whisper a response and barely raise your hand, do it..do it now. Trust Him, obey Him. Serve in the King's battle and let Him choose your battlefield and your battle plan. His choices are perfect and His glory's at stake. The war on truth is being waged daily. The gospel is constantly under attack and people are dying by the millions without Christ! Tell Jesus you don't want to sit on the sidelines another day. Get in the fight!