WARTIME
MENTALITY
Thank
God for the battle verses in the Bible. We go into the unknown every day of our
lives, and especially every Monday morning, for the week is sure to be a
battlefield, outwardly and inwardly in the unseen life of the spirit, which is
often by far the sternest battlefield for souls. Either way, the Lord your God
goes before you, He shall fight for you!
The
Christian soldier must avoid two evils – he must not faint or yield in the time
of fight, and after a victory he must not wax insolent and secure. When he has
overcome, he is so to behave himself as though he were
presently again to be assaulted. For Satan’s temptations, like the waves of the
sea, do follow one in the neck of the other.
George Downame
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner
of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 306.
We ought to regard the church not as a
luxurious hostelry where Christian gentlemen may each one dwell at ease in his
own inn, but as a barracks in which soldiers are gathered together to be
drilled and trained for war. We should regard the church not as an association
for mutual admiration and comfort, but as an army with banners, marching to the
fray, to achieve victories for Christ, to storm the strongholds of the foe, and
to add province after province to the redeemer’s kingdom.
C.H. Spurgeon
The
manual of operation for the Christian war-time mentality is the Bible. It was
inspired and authorized by the Commander, and contains all the truth needed to
win people over from the enemy camp, deprogram their old thought patterns,
train them in strategies of righteousness and equip them with armor and weapons
to defeat Satan and liberate his captives
John Piper
How the Spirit
Helps Us Understand, 1 Corinthians 2:14-16, May 20, 1984. www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
Could
it be that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer
come from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to
use the transmitter? We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it
into a civilian intercom to call the servants for another cushion in the den…
We see repeatedly in Scripture (Mt. 9:38; Lk. 21:34-36; Rom. 15:30-31; Eph.
6:12, 17-19; Col. 4:3; 2 Thes. 3:1) that prayer is a walkie-talkie for warfare,
not a domestic intercom for increasing our conveniences.
John Piper
Desiring God, 1996,
p. 152, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
There
is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as
a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow – especially since
the King himself is stripped for battle.
John Piper
May the
Church of Christ recognize the reality of the war in which we are engaged, the
incomparable power which is available to us through the Cross, and the
unavoidable responsibility to appropriate the power to carry out the commission
of our Lord until His return signals the end of the war.
Timothy M. Warner
Spiritual Warfare,
Crossway, 1991, p. 143.
The
reason why many fail in battle is because they wait until the hour of battle.
The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on
their knees long before the battle came... Anticipate your battles; fight them
on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory.
R.A. Torrey
Soon
the battle will be over. It will not be long now before the day will come when
Satan will no longer trouble us. There will be no more domination, temptation,
accusation, or confrontation. Our warfare will be over and our commander, Jesus
Christ, will call us away from the battlefield to receive the victor’s crown.
Thomas
Watson
The Lord’s Prayer, Banner of Truth, 1965, p.
284.
When
principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then
battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of
dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the
fire of your faith.
Abraham Kuiper
The true
Christian is called to be a soldier, and must behave as such from the day of
his conversion to the day of his death. He is not meant to live a life of
religious ease, [laziness], and security. He must never imagine for a moment
that he can sleep and doze along the way to heaven, like on traveling in an
easy carriage… If the Bible is the rule of his faith and practice, he will find
his course laid down very plainly in this matter. He
must “fight.”
J.C. Ryle
Holiness,
p. 63.
Christianity is a battle –
not a dream.
Wendell Phillips
The Christian
life is a war, and the fiercest battles are those that rage within the heart of
every believer. The new birth radically and permanently changes a person’s
sinful nature, but it does not immediately liberate that nature for all of the
remnants of sin. Birth is followed by growth, and that growth involves warfare.
Tom
Ascol
The War Inside, Tabletalk, April, 2009, p.
27. Used by Permission.
The Queen Mary, lying in
repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the
past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the
Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football
fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace
and war. On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to
depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons
of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held
no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime
austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces
fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks, not just double but eight tiers high,
explain why the peacetime complement of 3000 gave way to 15,000 people on board
in wartime. How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must
have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a
nation depended upon it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the
survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.
Ralph Winter
Reconstruction to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle, Perspectives on the
World Christian Movement, William Carey Library, 1981, p. 814.
God has
appointed this whole life to be all as a race or a battle; the state of rest,
wherein we shall be so out of danger as to have no need of watching and
fighting, is for another world.
Jonathan Edwards
We are so
utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the
Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are "harmless," and
therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious
objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high
places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken
boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are
"sideliners" – coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while
content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot
hate us; we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!
Jim Elliot
Brief Biography
The
church has been established by Christ to be an army…(but)
armies, in order to be effective, must be very sensitive in caring for their
wounded… There is always a major work to be done within the church in terms of
ministering to the needs of the people.
R.C. Sproul
The Purpose of God,
An Exposition of Ephesians, Christian Focus
Publications, 1994, p. 103.
All
of our warfare and all of our activity must take place in the context of
constant, unceasing prayer. Just as a
soldier on the battle line has to keep in constant communication with his
general headquarters and his commanding officer, so the Christian who is on the
battle line must be in constant communication with his Lord. He might be fully equipped with all the
armor, but if he is cut off from personal communication with his own commander,
then he will be isolated and vulnerable.
R.C. Sproul
The Purpose of God,
An Exposition of Ephesians, Christian Focus
Publications, 1994, p. 152.
If
I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the
truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil
are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may
be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier
is proved to be steady… [It] is mere
flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point (of attack).
Martin Luther
Quoted
by Francis A. Schaeffer in The Great Evangelical Disaster, Crossway, 1984, p.
50-51.
The main
trouble with the Christian Church today is that she is too much like a clinic,
too much like a hospital; that is why the great world is going to hell
outside!... Look at the great campaign, look at it objectively, look at it from God’s standpoint. Forget yourself and your
temporary troubles and ills for the moment; fight in the army. It is not a
clinic you need; you must realize that we are in a barracks, and that we are
involved in a mighty campaign.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
We must not
conceal from ourselves that true Christianity brings with it a daily cross in
this life, while it offers us a crown of glory in the life to come. The flesh
must be daily crucified. The devil must be daily resisted. The world must be
daily overcome. There is a warfare to be waged, and a
battle to be fought. All this is the inseparable accompaniment of true religion.
Heaven is not to be won without it. Never was there a truer word than the old
saying, “No cross, no crown!” If we never found this out by experience, our
souls are in a poor condition.
J.C. Ryle
Commentary, Matthew 17.
The worth of
a soldier is never known in time of peace.
Author
Unknown
The
fall of man has created a perpetual crisis. It will last until sin has been put
down and Christ reigns over a redeemed and restored world. Until that time the
earth remains a disaster area and its inhabitants live in a state of
extraordinary emergency. To me it has always been difficult to understand those
evangelical Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis
existed. They say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to
leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of the world as
well. They are at ease while the world burns.
A.W. Tozer