Fair Weather Follower or Battle Hardened Warrior

God is chiseling on you. Chipping away the gunk, junk, bunk. Sandpapering to a polish. Maybe even sandblasting at times. I’ve even gone through seasons I feel like sledgehammers are his tool of choice. But that’s okay. I know I deserve it, and so do you. And he’s preparing us to live for him in all we do.

He’s still working on me and you. When he’s done, he’ll take his work home. Till then … chip, chisel, smooth, polish away.

And, we often think life should be easy. That living for him will make it all butterflies and sunny day trail walks. Yeah, like that happens. We often think we can do whatever we want too. Live life the way we desire, we will handle it here. Then, we will let God handle everything once we get to heaven. It’s like we are fair weather followers with little effort on our part.

But God wants sold out, completely surrendered, yearning to be like him children. We are to burn the boats, have a no turning back attitude, leave it all on the field, sold out to him lifestyle.

Life is a battle, a spiritual warfare. We need to train and be aware of the battle going on around us. We battle with him at our sides, we battle wearing armor provided by him, and we battle in his strength. And we battle knowing the victory is his.

But battle brings wounds. Battle brings sacrifice. And battle leaves scars. Yet knowing what God did for me, I will not run away from the battle.

And that includes the battle to live for him. It’s not always easy (that’s why it’s called ‘battle’). But I will fight the good fight in my life as I live for him.

A.W. Tozer wrote:

“The flaming desire to be rid of every unholy thing and to put on the likeness of Christ at any cost is not often found among us. We expect to enter the everlasting kingdom of our Father and to sit down around the table with sages, saints, and martyrs, and through the grace of God, maybe we shall; yes, maybe we shall. But for most of us, it could prove at first an embarrassing experience. Ours might be the silence of the untried soldier in the presence of the battle-hardened heroes who have fought the fight and won the victory and who have scars to prove that they were present when the battle was joined… It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”

Just some rambling thoughts as we start 2021 … let’s be serious about the spiritual warfare in our lives … let’s live for him.