Truth Streams – GrahamCooke.Com
This guest post comes to us from Graham Cooke at Graham Cooke Ministries.
Warriors and Soldiers
Graham Cooke
Every Christian is called to be a soldier in the army of God. Soldiers are called to counter evil with the overwhelming, overcoming good that flows from a heart in love with God. No matter what situation a Christian soldier is in, they must live from our spirit. Soldiers bless everyone around them and contribute to a positive spiritual atmosphere.
No Christian has an excuse to moan about the enemy. After all, as 1 John 4:4 says, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Every soldier should want to be a thorn in the side of the enemy. We can make a difference.
Spiritual warriors, however, play a different role than Christian soldiers; they are a completely different breed. They are on special assignment, charged with specific God-led initiatives against the enemy. Spiritual warriors are the special forces of the Kingdom, going out against the enemy in advance of the Church. Out there, they battle and hold ground until Christian soldiers–reinforcements–arrive to help them. They are out in front of that broader force.
These warriors carry an anointing to be in advance of the Church and ahead of what the enemy is doing. They thwart the plans of darkness by passionately loving Jesus and intensely hating the devil.
The apostles and Hebrews 11 heroes were the foremost spiritual warriors of their time. They have given us a template for the greatness we are called to. They took and held ground until God’s soldiers of their day could reinforce them. When the teenaged David stepped forward and killed Goliath, his victory inspired the previously paralyzed Israelite soldiers to charge into the fight. When Gideon accepted God’s call to lead the fight against the Midianites, others fell in behind–so many, in fact, that God had to whittle down the number.
Noah was obedient to God in the days before the flood and saved humanity from extinction, but it was his children that fell in behind and repopulated the earth. Moses and Aaron faced Pharaoh alone but all of Israel walked across the Red Sea to freedom. Joshua and Caleb spied out the Promised Land, but the entire nation had to take it. Joseph went alone into Egypt, but forged a place for his entire family. Spiritual warriors take the first and most courageous step–but soldiers are needed to come behind them and back them up.
Soldiers need to line up behind spiritual warriors in times of crisis. It is in those crises that the purposes of God are most forcefully advanced. If we had just a few spiritual warriors stand up in every church in the land, nothing would stop the Kingdom. Only a very small number of spiritual warriors are needed to break through in a region.
The men and women listed in Hebrews 11 and other passages of Scripture first broke through for themselves and then led everyone else into that new world order.
What remarkable people those warriors were; Scripture records that “the world was not worthy” of them (Hebrews 11:38). Spiritual warriors make tough choices, confidently, about who, how, and where they will focus their internal attention. They live from the inside–funneling the energy and revelation they receive from the Holy Spirit out into the world. They punch through spiritual opposition, allowing soldiers to pour in and occupy new territory.
Warriors do not react to their circumstances, they respond to God. They see everything as an opportunity to learn, grow, advance, and increase faith. They have taken their own internal territory.
They do not avoid tough situations, they are not looking for rescue. They are developing a revelation of God, so profound, it governs every facet of their lives.
Warriors know that Jesus reigns and everything leads to majesty. That means every situation is not theirs to win; but theirs to lose.
Warriors cannot be intimidated by the enemy, because they are too busy being fascinated by Jesus.
Q&A
Question: I struggle with being willful. What role should my will play in my walk with God?
Graham’s Answer: It is sometimes difficult for Christians to understand that our will is cold-blooded. It should be very rarely emotionally influenced. We can make a cold-blooded, unemotional decision to do something and our faith will rise.
If you are searching for some kind of emotional context in order to “feel like” doing something, it will never happen. Your will does not need your emotions to function. Obviously, they can and will combine, but it has to be under your will’s direction and rule. Your emotions cannot be allowed to rule you.
A spiritual warrior allows God to re-direct their will. Warriors struggle with it–most are willful, resolute, steadfast people, so it is only natural that this would be a difficult choice to make. But they do make that choice, and they do submit their will to God.
God works on the will first and then, through it, He renews the mind, gets ahold of our emotions, and transforms us. As that transformation happens, our faith rises. God gave us a will so that we would never be at the mercy of our emotions, which are influenced by so many different things.
Spiritual warriors are willing to allow God to touch them, believing He is doing it even when they don’t “feel” it. “God says it, I believe it, that jolly well settles it”: sometimes faith is just that cold-blooded.
