Trust the Captain

Have you ever noticed that in life, when we go through the tough times, at that particular moment, it seems overwhelming. You consider it at that moment to be the worst, unbearable, exhausting, feeling like you won't make it. Then God gets you through it, and you feel blessed, empowered, grateful, excited, and ready to face anything knowing God is on your side, only for the next pitfall or battle to come your way! But if you're the kind of person who writes and reflects, I want you to think about those times. Think about the times that God brought you out of a storm or trial in your life. Reflect on how He got you out of it, how He saved you, how He redeemed you, how He loved you through it and gave you the victory. In that moment, you felt like it was the worst thing you could ever go through, that there would never be anything more overwhelming or worst you could go through. Then the next storm came, and it was even worst than the last one, but God got you through that one too...notice a cycle here? It seems to me that every time we go through the unbearable trial of the moment we are in, we feel like we couldn't ever bear any more, we gain more strength, more knowledge, more power from our previous battles in order to confront and fight the new battle before us. Makes sense...think about war. When soldiers go out to war, if they don't make it past the first battle, means they are dead. They didn't survive. But the soldier who survives and goes on to the next battle has learned tactics, has grown stronger, smarter, more strategic, bolder, and confident because they were able to make it through the previous battle. This is the same in spiritual warfare. If we make it through the first battle, which let's be honest, Christ has already won the victory, so the only way we would loose the battle is if we don't allow God to help us fight through it, if we don't rely on Him to show us how, and if we don't let Him lead us as the captain of the squad. Makes sense again. A soldier has a captain. That soldier depends on the knowledge and expertise that Captain has in order to help see them through the battle to live another day. It is the captains responsibility to ensure that his soldiers make it out alive. But soldiers are explicitly taught to listen to every command that captain gives them. And they listen, because they know their life depends on it. Casualties do happen, but most of the time its due to the fact that unforeseen circumstances rise up that no one was prepared for. But man oh man, we have it good. We happen to have the best Captain as our lead. There is no unforeseen circumstance He doesn't know about, there is no surprise attack that He can't handle, and there is no battle He can't win. Plain and simple. But our Captain is all about giving us choice. The choice to follow His lead or not. Just like on a battlefield, if the soldiers choose to listen to the captain's commands, they are likely to survive and make it to the next battle, any wrong moves, and it could cost them their life. In spiritual warefare, when we make it through the first battle, we too gain strength, wisdom, strategy, boldness, and confidence to face the next plot of the enemy. And don't forget we need to study the enemy. In the same way that soldiers study their enemy to know how to best attack back, study patterns and strategies that have worked before on other enemies, and tweak plans based on any new intelligence, we've got to gear up and study the best way to fight back. For us, in spiritual warfare, that means reflecting on how we overcame the previous battle we went through. Thinking about what we did to defeat the enemy, and putting into play those same tactics, but tweaking based on the new intel you gain. How do we gain intel? By going to the Captain and asking Him to direct us on the exact moves we need to take to bring down the enemy and his plot against us. Think back...on the many times God saved you and helped you make it through the battles of the past. And each time you face a new battle, a new trial, and it seems like that one is now the worst, that you will never make it, you follow His lead again, and make it through, and yet again, another badge gets added to your uniform. You're ready to move on. You're able to face the next fight. God will never give you more than you can bear. But just when we think we can't, He sees us through, and the only reason those battles seem to get more difficult, is because our Captain knows that we have gained the strength, knowledge, boldness and confidence to be able to defeat the enemy once again. He will never put us in or through a circumstance that He can't see us through. But we've got to trust Him in that. We've got to believe that He wants what's best for us, and that if He allows us to go into a battle, that it's because He knows that we have all it takes to get through it because He is for us and fights with us. It's a win/win with Him every time. There is no doubt about it, you've got the victory, but you're going to have to trust Him to lead you. If you try to do it on your own, you're going to step on a land mine and then it'll be over. But if you let Him lead you in every single step, the victories you've won in the past, will prepare you for the victories that are coming in the future. Trust the Captain. I promise He will never fail.