Battle

I am re-reading both Randy Alcorn's Lord Foulgrin's Letters and Francis Schaeffer's The Great Evangelical Crisis. It is a potent combination, one that reminds me I should probably read works in tandem because the sum of the total is greater than the parts.

What the two remind me of is how easy it is for myself to get sidetracked in the realities of life.

In reality, the great drama playing out in the world is not freedom versus oppression, right versus wrong, or even justice versus injustice (although these are all very important). The great drama of the world - in fact, of the universe - is the one running through the soul of every human being currently alive: will it be Heaven - or Hell?

The physical reality we see is not the total reality - we live in a universe inhabited by spiritual beings that are engaged in a titanic struggle not over the control of this universe or even the control of this world - the first has already been decided, and the second will be someday - but over the souls of men and women, souls of people we interact with, love, insult, mock, care for, treat as idols of worship or as objects of use, everyday.

And the stakes of the battle could not be higher. Again, it's not for control of this or any other universe - that's decided. Instead, it is for the eternal destiny of each currently living human. The eternal destiny. Forever. With God or in Hell.

If I can stop and grasp that -indeed, if I can get even a glimpse of that-that changes how I look both at the world in general and my world in particular. Suddenly what happens becomes less important than how I react to it. How I react to people and show them Christ through me becomes less important than how I get my way with them. What I give in service to God, to the cause of salvation, becomes less important than what I get and keep.

In Don't Waste Your Life John Piper compares the difference of a peacetime and wartime mentality through a display on the Queen Elizabeth where a dining room is divided in half, one half with the settings as it would have appeared in peacetime, the other when she served as a troop transport. On one hand, there are linen tablecloths, 12 course settings, and fine crystal and china; on the other , metal trays and bare tables. Everything was stripped down because there was a war on, and the purpose of the ship was different.

The reality is, that is true today. I don't just say "for the Christian" because in reality we are all impacted by this, Christian and non-Christian alike, even though all do not see it. The battle rages around us daily, hourly - as one author said, "As you read Ephesians 6:10-18, you can almost hear the smoke and fire, the clash of arms".

As K.P. Yohannan says in Revolution in World Missions every minute thousands of people die (life being 100% fatal). How many of those have never heard the Gospel, never seen the Gospel as lived out?

There is a battle on. As a Christian, am I engaged - or do I blithely wander through life, thinking the whole purpose of creation and Christ's sacrifice is purely to make my life more pleasant, with Heaven thrown in besides?