A Call to Arms Part 1

Men wage war for various reasons at various times. While some are compelled by patriotism or religious beliefs, others still are driven by ambition or lust for power. Whatever the underlying reason for war, it is powerful enough to cause an individual to risk their life for it.

In any battle, in any war, the possible loss of one’s life is implied. There has never been a war waged without casualties, and every individual who enlists does so with the full knowledge that it may very well mean their life.

Physical war is bloody, brutal, and taxing in every way possible. What believers seem to have forgotten over the years is that spiritual warfare is just as brutal, just as taxing, and just as ruthless as any war in the physical. Spiritual warfare also carries greater far reaching consequences than war in the natural does, because the consequences of spiritual warfare are eternal in their scope.

Wherever I happen to be on any given Sunday it seems I hear more about the victory party after the war, than I do about the war itself anymore. Preachers don’t like to preach on spiritual warfare, parishioners don’t like to hear about spiritual warfare, and so we focus on the hereafter, on that moment beyond time when the last sword has been swung and the last blow has been struck, utterly failing to prepare or even make the individual aware of the war they are currently embroiled in.

If you call yourself a son or daughter of God, then you are at war. Since the fact that you are already at war is a foregone reality and you have no say in the matter, would it not be wise and prudent to learn all you can about your enemy and about the weapons you have at your disposal?

Would it not be wisdom itself to learn how we can defend ourselves, and even go on the offensive against an enemy who has already made it perfectly clear that he will take no prisoners?

Even though the spectator stands are overflowing and the warriors on the field of battle are decreasing in number at an alarming rate, we who remain cannot give up the fight. We cannot lay down our arms, we cannot take off our armor, we cannot surrender to the enemy, for if we do we will be counted among the rebellious and disobedient, those who ought to have known what it is to stand, to fight, and to overcome an enemy who fears our General, and who has given us the privilege and right to walk in His authority.

Revelation 12:10-11, “Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ‘Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”

We read these words and somehow they sound hollow to our ears. We read these words and do not see ourselves in the role of those who did not love their lives to the death, those who overcame the devil by the blood of the Lamb and the power of their testimony. We always think it is referring to another, to someone else, to a different group of believers, a different generation, or a different continent perhaps.

We cannot fail to see the simple profundity of these verses. The only means by which this group of overcomers was identified is that they were brethren, and they knew the weapons of their warfare, they knew the power of the blood of the Lamb, and they, to the last, forfeited their lives for the great high calling of being a follower of Jesus.

If battle finds us unprepared, if the enemy finds us defenseless, if we find ourselves standing on the battlefield with no weapons of either defense or offense, know that our ill preparedness was not God’s fault but our own. We have been warned and repeatedly so to prepare, to put on our armor, to know how to wield the power granted to us by  the blood of the Lamb, and if we have failed to do these things, or believed that they somehow did not pertain to us, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Ephesians 6:10-13, “Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.  Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.