Battlefields

In 2007, my dad and step-mom took my brother and me to see the Civil War battlefields in the eastern United States.  My dad said it might be the last opportunity we would have to do something like this, and I am really glad we did.  It was my favorite trip of all the places I ever went with my dad and brother.  We went to Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Manassas, Wilderness, and Washington D.C.

Very few places I have gone have left such a lasting impact on my life.  I was in the Navy at the time, and the sacrifice of those in the military and their families was and is very close to my heart.  On our second day at Gettysburg we arrived in the morning.  The fog drifted slowly across the battlefield and around the lifeless gray monuments of a time long passed.  I will never forget first seeing and then standing at the Bloody Angle, looking out over the area where Colonel Pickett charged the fortified union position on Cemetery Ridge.  I remember being overwhelmed thinking, "So many men died right there.  Their lives ended on that field."  I felt as if I could almost hear the Union cannons firing canister into the wall of Confederate soldiers.  The smoke from rifles and cannons filled the air, and the screams of the wounded and dying embedding themselves into the minds of the survivors forever.  It was a very sobering and surreal moment.  I remember the Dunker church at Antietam.  The Confederacy took up position near it, and it was targeted during the battle several times by Union forces.  I remember seeing the bullet wounds that scarred the walls of the church.  I find it fitting that the walls of a church building bear the scars of war.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. " (1 Corinthians 10:3-6).

We are the church, and we are at war, brothers and sisters.  It is a war with battles being fought every day that are every bit as terrible as Gettysburg, Antietam, and the many other battles that took place in the Civil War.  The violence is every bit as terrible as that which the Union and Confederacy visited upon each other during those campaigns, and the casualties are piling up.

If you are seeking to truly follow God, you can expect to be attacked by the "spiritual forces of evil."  So be encouraged if you are trying to follow God and find yourself under fire.  It means Satan sees you as a threat, and God desires us all to be a threat to the enemy.  If you do not find yourself under fire, consider whether or not you are putting into action what is given to you in the Bible.  If you are not, you have been relegated to the sideline.  At best, you are not in the fight.  At worst, you are already a casualty.

All is not lost because "greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world."  You can choose to get up off the ground and rejoin the fight.  God is sufficient enough to empower you to fight once again.  So, today, take up your sword, which is the Word of God.  Put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6), and go out with the eternal mindset to do war on the enemy.  Be a threat to the Kingdom of Darkness and bring the light of God's salvation to those who desperately need the love of Jesus.