“What do you mean you lost my paperwork?” I asked as I looked at the recruiter in bewilderment. I had been preparing my entire life for the military and had my sights set on Special Forces, determined to be Captain Badass.
Not any longer. The Sergeant had misplaced my papers and I would have to be content as a private and maybe get a shot at Special Forces later.
I was looking for an identity that I would be satisfied walking in. I thought that if I could be cool and respected as a hardcore, dangerous, military operative, then I would feel content.
I needed to fill my pride to feel like I had worth. It didn’t matter that I had no qualms with being a killer because I had no love in my heart.
After my life plans changed and I moved to Texas, God began teaching me to love, but over the last few years, there were still remnants of that military nature that clung to me. I often dismissed these as “base natures of the flesh” cause we are supposed to love at all times right?
I figured that you couldn’t love someone if you were at war with them and had resolved to be a serial pacifist despite the fulfillment, joy and satisfaction I had from anything combat-related.
Accompanying this turmoil in my heart was a confusion about the nature of God. I embraced the merciful, loving God of the New Testament while holding the just and righteous God of the Old Testament at arms length. I knew they were one and the same but I couldn’t reconcile both natures of God nor could I reconcile the conflict in my heart.
After seeing the suffering in the Syrian Refugee Crisis, I sketched a picture of a soldier on his knee, dropping his sword and shield. Like the soldier, I dropped my sword, defeated. Every last bit of desire to fight was crushed when I saw how much others were suffering and how incapable I was to help them.
The suffering I saw, the pain others endured, and frustration I saw in their eyes drove me to a place of questioning God’s goodness. These were God’s children and he was letting them suffer!
That frustration clung to me as I left Greece, accompanied me in Nepal, stabbed me in India, broke me in Malaysia, and infuriated me in Burma.
“God! Just…..DO SOMETHING!” I often cried in frustration while holding an orphan or sitting with a widowed refugee.
He did…
A few weeks ago, a team member prophesied over me mentioning an organization called the “Free Burma Rangers”.
This is an organization I discovered in Thailand. A Christian group of ex-special forces operatives trains and equips teams of natives medically, academically, logistically, militarily, and spiritually. Though not a military force, they engage oppressing forces in defense of refugees and insist that they do not fight soldiers, but rather the evil motivating the soldiers. They fight with love; rarely bullets.
Over the next two days I experienced incredible healing. For the first time I saw “loving your enemy” in action. For the first time I reconciled the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New. For the first time, I embraced the fullness of my identity and purpose.
While I sat angry with God for letting the injustices of Isis, the Free Burma Army, Sudanese Terrorists, and others terrorize innocent people, I wasn’t seeing the true battle and I wasn’t seeing my role in it.
I’m not sure where I got the idea that God was supposed to miraculously intervene in response to every injustice without us doing anything, but that idea stopped me from stepping into the fullness of who He designed me to be!
““Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”
??Isaiah? ?58:6
I’ve always been a warrior, I’ve always desired to fight, but God had to teach me how to love before I could step into my identity as a warrior. God had to teach me to see good and evil instead of people.
A warrior not motivated by love is a killer and a lover not ready to defend the helpless does not truly love.
Now, I wish I could say I’m ready, but learning to love is a constant process, and I’m not ready to be a warrior. All I can say is “here I am Lord, send me.”
…..and He is……
