My dear warrior,

Welcome to Part 2. Yesterday, I left you with a question to think about. I ask you again: Is God so cruel that He would dangle your hearts desire in front of your face and taunt you with it, only to deprive you of it? Ask that out loud. Just like I wrote in There is Always a Solution, I want you to laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. Go ahead: laugh! Why would God dangle the answer to your prayers—your heart’s desire—right in front of your face? When the Bible says that God is good, it means that He is good. He is not some cruel, sadistic God with a penchant for schadenfreude—that is, deriving pleasure from your pain and suffering, or gaining joy from taunting you with what you desire. It is not in His nature to taunt us. It is not like Him to take the very things from us that we’ve desired all along for the sake of seeing us suffer.

My dear warrior,
 
As I wrote yesterday, any area of your life for which you have no hope is under the influence of a lie. There is always hope. Not only is there always hope, there is always a solution! Recently I was listening to Steve Backlund talking about just that. He said if the brain doesn’t think there is a solution, it won’t look for one. But once the brain actually believes there is a solution, it begins to function like a heavenly search engine, searching until it finds a solution.

My dear warriors,
​
On Sunday I had the joy of getting to listen to a brilliant man of God speak about suffering. It is something that has been on my heart for some time now, and I knew I would write about it today. As warriors, as Christians – and as humans – we are frequently faced with the reality of suffering. In these past few months, I have been dealt more than one heavy blow in my own life; I have met a woman who was thrown from a building and had nearly every bone in her body broken; I have met a man grieving the loss of his father; I have met a young woman without a place to call home. Tragically, suffering is part of the Christian life. According to scripture, it is a critical part of our formation, it is a critical piece of us becoming the men and women of God we are meant to be.

Dear warriors, 

You were made to magnify. It is written into your very DNA. Whatever you focus on and give your attentions to, you will magnify. Specifically you were created to magnify your Creator, the Lord your God. The bible calls it "beholding." (To give your attention to)

Warriors, it is so important that you know where your focus is. Know what you are magnifying; realize to what you devote the majority of your thoughts. Then, if you are not beholding Him, refocus your attentions (renew your mind!)

Introspection can be such a dangerous thing. Have you ever noticed yourself become so lost in your head that you went from having a perfectly fine day, to being ridiculously distressed? When we become impressed by evil, (and by this I mean overwhelmed by, not fascinated by), and our focus is on how bad things are (the world, circumstances in our lives, what-have-you), we become overwhelmed and our worldview gets skewed. Our lens becomes distorted like a fish eye lens. We no longer see clearly, but rather we see through a glass darkly. 

My dearest warriors,

Have you ever considered your greatest weapon? your strategy? Have you contemplated what it must look like to be on a spiritual battlefield? Perhaps you have. Perhaps not, but you are inexplicably finding yourself drawn to these thoughts, and finding yourself wanting those answers.

Warriors are always prepared. They are always armed with their weapons, and are never caught without. The fruits of the Spirit are a warriors greatest weapons. Love, joy, peace, patience/long-suffering, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. To add to those are rest,  humility, meekness and lowliness of heart. These are qualities that Christ himself exhibited; He Himself is the greatest example of the kind of a warrior we should be. Today we begin with rest, but we will dig further into the others in the coming weeks. 

As warriors, we must prepare ourselves: we must first learn peace, rest and stillness. It is in the midst of a storm, in the midst of trial, turbulence and turmoil that God wants to teach us peace. He won't ever teach us peace before, or outside of battle. He will introduce to it - but it is on the battlefield that our peace is established. You see, you can never learn peace unless you practice it in the midst of turmoil. Just like you cannot learn patience unless you practice being patient when your patience is being 'tested.' The secret you must understand is that it is possible to enter into rest, and to hide in a place of stillness where the enemy cannot touch you. A place where you are so deep in God's rest and stillness, that there is nothing the enemy can do to disrupt your peace. 

Earlier this week, I realized that I had an extremely important tool in my possession that I was carrying with me. As I was chatting with a new friend, I immediately knew why she was sharing her heartbreak with me: she desperately needed what I had. And I realized, I have shared this same tool over and over again -- how many more people are out there who are in absolute turmoil who need to know what I know?

"Be still, and know that I AM God" - Psalm 46:10 

Scripture repeatedly tells us to "be still." Yet, in this fast-paced world, it can seem almost impossible to quiet your mind. It seems like you'd have to be a monk on some remote mountain top to get any kind of peace, and yet, even that seems like a foreign thought. But Warriors must know how to still their minds, how to silence the thoughts that rage through their heads, to calm their hearts.