Adversaries Remain

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.

When we are going through adversity, we have a lot of questions: “Why are difficult people allowed to cause so much disturbance in my life?”  “Lord, why don’t you remove these impossible circumstances?”  “Why are my prayers taking so long to answer?”  And the big one: “Lord, why is the devil allowed to run rampant?”

Life’s issues are complex.  There is no simple answer to these questions.  But there is one answer we rarely consider:  God has let adversity remain in our lives in order to teach us to wage holy battles.  For some reason, now obscured by the mysteries of the eternal plan, we need to learn to fight.

And not only do we need to learn to fight, we need to do so in the power of God’s own strength and according to his character.  We need to understand his weapons, his ways, his goals, and his strategies.  We can never learn such things in a peaceful existence.  There has to be war.

We don’t like that.  We don’t understand it, either.  God has promised us his peace – his “shalom” – and we fully expect to realize it one day.  So, why do we need to learn warfare, we ask?  Why do our hands need to be trained for battle?

We don’t know.  Perhaps there are future battles to be fought before shalom comes – battles that only the hands and hearts of experience can wage.  Perhaps we are to be critical instruments in God’s violent opposition to evil.  Regardless, for whatever reason, God wants us to have experience.

Be encouraged!  Your adversity is not meant to destroy you, or even get you down – not by God, anyway.  No, he has greater plans for it.  He is teaching you to be a useful instrument in an other-worldly conflict.  The opposition of this world is your means to learn.

Do you have difficulties?  Conflict?  Enemies?  Pain?  You are being trained.  Learn your lessons well; fight the fight.  God has left adversaries in your life for a reason.

He did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience.  –Judges 3:2

Sincerely yours,

A long time Oasis member