Category: We Are At War

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That Was Almost Me!

In honor of the real reason behind the upcoming Christmas holiday, I’m going to share a story from my life that illustrates someone else’s sacrifice on my behalf. This particular experience drives home the point of Jesus taking my place like nothing else does.

Before I joined the Air Force I worked in construction, building houses. The Air Force was very particular and thorough about documenting the types of injuries, surgeries, and other aspects of recruits’ medical history. All of a potential recruit’s medical history paperwork needed to be in good order before they could even leave for basic training. I don’t remember how many times I had to fill out specific forms, but I remember that it was a pain to get it all completed.

Everyone at work knew that I was joining the Air Force, but the job I wanted wasn’t scheduled to have room for new Airmen for several months, so while I was waiting, all I had to do was not get hurt. I worked in construction. What could go wrong?

Our crew was framing a house, which was one of my favorite parts of building it, even though it was also one of the most physically strenuous. We had finished the first floor, and we were just about to start work on the second. What we usually did at this point was have a guy start lifting the decking…a beefed-up version of plywood…up to someone on the second floor. Once we got most of the decking installed on the second floor, we could start moving other supplies up there.

This time we did something a little different. I don’t remember exactly why, but we had a backhoe on site. Rather than pass the sheets of decking up one at a time, we threw a chain around a bunch of the sheets and connected it to the backhoe’s arm. We were going to use the machine to lift a bunch of the decking up to the second floor all at once. If this worked out, it was going to save us a lot of work.

The backhoe operator drove around to the part of the house that was closest to being able to reach the second floor. He moved into place and began positioning the arm so that two of us up top could pull the sheets out of the stack. I was one of the guys, and I had gone to high school with the other guy, Jared. Jared was the kind of guy that had been working on job sites and picking up extra cash since he was a kid. He had worked on more roofs, houses, and barns than he could remember. He just had a sixth sense about how building supplies needed to fit together and how the process needed to go.

The two of us stood on top of the second floor, waiting to receive the first sheets. We had no floor to stand on yet; we had to balance on the rafters that were 16 inches apart. We watched as the backhoe operator extended the backhoe’s arm as high as it would go, only to come up a few inches short. We talked it over for a bit, and decided we’d try tipping the bundle just enough that we could pull a sheet up toward us. We didn’t like the idea of dealing with a tipped bundle, but it was better than lifting the sheets up one by one.

This idea might have worked if we used a magical chain that tightened around the bundle a little bit as each sheet came out. Think of a deck of cards that’s held in place not with a rubber band, but with a string that’s tied tightly around the outside. As we tried tipping the bundle just enough to pull a sheet up onto where we stood, the sheets in the middle of the bundle started sliding toward the cab of the backhoe. Out of self-preservation, the operator jerked the arm to stop the decking from smashing into him, but in the process it made the bucket smash into the wall holding up the rafters Jared and I stood on. It broke the wall loose and in about three seconds there would be nothing holding us up anymore.

Jared was quicker to understand everything that was happening, and he started tearing across the rafters with a quickness. He slowed down long enough to grab me and get me moving in the right direction, because I had to spin 180 degrees to be pointed toward safety. He pulled me onto my feet and gave me a big shove, providing the momentum I needed to reach a different section of the building that wasn’t in danger of collapsing. The big shove he gave me killed his momentum toward safety though. It all happened so fast that I don’t remember everything that occurred, but the wall gave way, and so did the rafters holding us up. As I was falling, I was just barely able to reach out and grab a beam that wasn’t affected by the wall’s collapse. I was running across rafters that were on their way down as I reached it. It was just in the nick of time, too; it was a last-ditch leap to grab something sturdy enough to save me from disaster.

Jared, however, did NOT make it to safety. He ended up tumbling from the second floor to the first in the middle of a mass of collapsing lumber. He suffered a fall he could have escaped because he stopped long enough to give me a chance I wouldn’t have had without him. He could have made it without a problem if he only looked after himself, but without even thinking he helped keep me from getting hurt. If I could go back in time and grab a picture of the scene, it would have been a powerful one to see Jared getting buried in an avalanche of two-by-sixes and two-by-eights as I safely swung from a cross beam just feet away, thanks to him.

This event made me understand the word “sacrifice” in a different light. I always knew the Bible stories about God sacrificing His son. After awhile, you forget to appreciate what an awesomely painful thing that was for Him to do. Then something like this happens and you see it in a whole new light.

How do you pay someone back after something like that?

You can’t.

If you haven’t invited Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life, that doesn’t change the fact that He paid a heavy price to offer you a tremendous gift. To be honest, He knew that many people wouldn’t take Him up on it, and He knew that some people would knowingly reject it. I can’t imagine not being thankful to Jared after what he did. It also helped remind me of how much more thankful I need to be for an even bigger act of selflessness.

This Christmas don’t forget to pause and give thanks to God for the significance of what we’re actually celebrating during this time of year. Christ’s birth marked the start of a plan that would result in a painful and tormenting sacrifice that opened the door for you and for me to gain entry into Heaven. The concept of painful separation from God after death is our default status as humans, but Christ’s sacrifice created the only way for us to avoid that future and instead spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

Just for the sake of closure, Jared was okay, but he was pretty mad and stayed on the floor for awhile. I dropped from the beam and ran toward him, throwing planks every which way to get him uncovered. He scared me when I found him in the fetal position…I kept asking him to say something, but he stayed quiet. I think he was pretty upset at seeing the problem coming and still having to deal with it. We later joked about how tough Jared was. He’s the only guy I know that you can drop a house on and he keeps on going. 🙂

This is my last post of 2018. Enjoy time together with loved ones this season; hold them tighter and don’t take them for granted. Talk about big, impossible ideas of how you can labor for God’s glory. Spur one another on. I’ll resume posting the first or second week of the new year.

In the words of a different, more famous Tim, “God Bless us, every one!”

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Playing To Not Lose

Hopefully you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Some movies just go with certain holidays. I’m sure many of you either have a tradition of watching certain movies around Christmas or Thanksgiving. For me, the movie “Rocky” (and by extension, the rest of the Rocky movies) are Thanksgiving movies.

There’s a movie that just came out this past week. Although I haven’t seen it, “Creed 2” is the latest in a line of movies that involve the boxing character Rocky Balboa. I’m a fan of most of the franchise (they could’ve skipped “Rocky V”), so I’ll piggyback off of the latest release to make a spiritual point. 🙂

I didn’t ever really think that I’d have to include a spoiler alert for a movie that’s about 40 years old, but if you don’t want to know how “Rocky” or “Rocky II” end, you may want to watch them before finishing today’s post.

The Rocky movies are American classics. The early portion of the series is about how a down-on-his-luck amateur boxer, Rocky Balboa (played by Sylvester Stallone), gets a dream shot: to take on the world champion, Apollo Creed, for the world heavyweight boxing championship.

Rocky’s not a great fighter, but he can sure take a beating and keep on going. At the end of the fight, Rocky loses, but he’s still standing after 15 rounds of being pummeled by the world champ, blowing away everyone’s expectations. Apollo won the fight according to the judges, but he didn’t actually defeat Rocky in the eyes of many spectators.

In the second movie, the champ receives hate mail from critics that think he’s a fraud. He’s upset at being accused of faking the fight, of carrying this “bum” through an entire bout. To prove to the world that the Balboa fight was just a fluke, he pursues a rematch with Rocky. He intends to destroy Balboa so he can show everyone that Apollo Creed is still worthy of being called a champion. Balboa eventually agrees to a rematch, and the two slug it out once again.

(I’m sorry, I’m a big fan of Rocky, so I’m including a fun clip just to show you what kind of guy he is. In this clip, he’s on his way to his rematch with Apollo Creed, but he wants to make a quick stop and link up with his priest, Father Carmine. He’s already running late, but being the great theologian and philosopher that he is, he has his priorities.)

Of course, the rematch with Creed goes to the fifteenth round again. By this point, Creed is way ahead on points; all he needs to do is stay away from Rocky and he’ll win the fight, but he’ll be no better off than he was after the first fight, so he continues trying to knock out Balboa. Both men are exhausted, have swollen faces, and lack any semblance of footwork at this point. At the end they’re just standing toe to toe, swinging with everything they’ve got left to try to land knockout punches on their opponent. In a true Hollywood moment, they simultaneously land punches on each other, leading to a double knockdown.

The referee began counting. If they both got to their feet before “10,” they’d return to the fight. If only Creed got to his feet, he’d win the fight and retain the title. If Balboa was the only one that made it to his feet, he’d win and be crowned the new heavyweight champ. In this situation, the rules stipulate that if nobody gets up by the time the referee counts to 10, the fight ends in a draw, and whoever holds the title will retain it by default. Dazed and drained, both Creed and Balboa struggle to get oriented and begin trying to stand up. I’ll embed a clip of the end of the fight at the bottom of the post.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a difference between “playing to win” and “playing to not lose.” As Christians, we’re called to bring Jesus to all that don’t know about Him. Those that accept Christ as Savior cross over from spiritual death to new spiritual life. Our “default setting” when we’re born is a life of sin that we can’t escape on our own; we need to make a transition to escape a fate of eternal separation from God after we die.

If you believe the Bible, you believe that Satan is prowling, looking for souls to divert and devour. He doesn’t need to convert anyone, because they’re already his. All he needs to do is prevent conversions from happening. So in that sense, all he needs to do is play to not lose.

Here’s where we come in. It’s our job to work toward those conversions, offering people the truth and a way out of their default course. It’s not an easy thing. Every person reading this post has a different collection of talents, resources, social circles, and spiritual gifts at their disposal.

Even though they don’t know it, there are people counting on you to carry the truth to them. Some will be open to it, others won’t, but it’s going to take more than a half-hearted effort to make a difference.

For their sake, play to win.

(The part I mentioned starts around 1:30, but I’m including the whole final round.)

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When Whiplash is a Good Thing

This post is a follow-on to my previous one, which had to do with people that are barely hanging in there, just trying to survive. (https://daregreatlynow.com/2018/11/05/helps-coming/)

Disclaimer: I have to warn you that I like military movies. Sometimes when I’m watching them, I get pretty excited about them and go back and watch the action-packed scenes a few times because I want to get a good handle on what I’m seeing. By their nature, though, they’re violent and often come with some salty language. I’m including a couple of clips below to go along with the post; if you’re not up for all the craziness right now, you’ll probably want the first clip. If my narrative below is too confusing and you just want to see for yourself (and can live with the cursing and shooting), go with clip number two.

One of my all-time favorite “spiritual metaphor” movie scenes comes from a movie called “Act of Valor.” It didn’t set any box office records or anything, but one of the distinguishing characteristics of the film was that the main characters in the movie were portrayed by active duty Navy SEALs. The plot was fictional, but it was based on real-world missions SEALs have conducted.

I know it wasn’t a real mission, but it was still fun to see SEALs doing some of the stuff they do. During the movie a team of SEALs had been sent into some foreign country to rescue an abducted CIA operative. The SEALs got solid information about her location, and they were tasked with recovering her. Her captors were torturing and interrogating her to find out how much the CIA knew about them. Heavily injured, her body wasn’t able to endure much more, and her health was failing quickly.

We’ve all seen movies or heard stories about Navy SEALs, and sometimes the line between what they can and can’t do gets a little blurred. They’re phenomenal at short-duration engagements, but since they usually work in smaller teams, a sizable enemy force will have a good chance of overwhelming them over time. In the movie, the SEALs rescued the CIA operative from immediate danger, but a sizable enemy force was bearing down on them. The rescue team stole a pickup truck and loaded everyone in, taking off just as a number of pursuit vehicles arrived to chase them during a high-speed shootout.

The SEALs’ planned method of extraction was to link up with a SWCC team…essentially a heavily-armed armored speedboat…whose callsign was Whiplash. But they began the assault earlier than planned (before the boats were in position), they hadn’t counted on this level of opposition on the way out, and there was too much happening for the original plan to function as intended.

The SEALs’ driver took off down the road without having an exact idea where he was going. The guy in the passenger seat was trying to navigate and establish radio contact with the team leader, who, along with another SEAL, was running to meet up with the rest. In addition to the barely conscious CIA operative, a member of the team had been shot in the head during the raid and was alive, but unconscious. Another team member was trying to keep him alive and revive him. All the while there’s a guy or two in the bed of the pickup trying to shield the CIA operative and return enough fire to keep the bad guys from getting too close.

The situation just kept getting worse. First they blew through their primary rendezvous point, and the enemy was too close for them to safely pull over at the backup rendezvous point, so they sped past it, too. They even pulled out a surprise or two to give themselves a better chance, but it just wasn’t enough. With no choice, they sped toward their last option, but by this time they had still created almost no separation from an aggressive enemy.

They ran out of road and at high speed splashed the truck directly into a river. They had gone as far as they could and had held the enemy at bay as long as possible, but despite keeping cool heads and performing at a high level, they could not be expected to do any more without some outside intervention. They had accomplished bold, even extraordinary things, but now it looked hopeless; the team had no reasonable hope of making a coordinated last stand against such devastating odds.

Just as the enemy trucks slid to a stop and armed men took aim, Whiplash came roaring around the river bend with guns blazing. Enemy shooters had no choice but to dive for cover as their vehicles got shot full of holes. After pinning down the enemy, sailors plucked the Americans out of the water and into the safety of the boats. As the scene closed, the vessel carrying the rescued team and CIA operative sped off down the river, having accomplished their objective.

(This is the shorter, less crazy version, but might still have a choice word or two.)

(The clip below includes the full pursuit, and is a little rougher on the eyes and ears.)

Have you ever had a day that felt like that? Things started out according to plan, but once one thing went wrong, it got bad in a hurry. Through grit and perseverance you might have been able to keep things from completely falling to pieces for awhile, but eventually the situation caught up with you and degraded to the point where it just wasn’t going to get better without some outside help.

Maybe you were on the other side of things. Maybe you were Whiplash, an answer to somebody’s prayer. Because of you and the help you were able to provide, you helped somebody stave off complete disaster.

Even better, maybe you have the opportunity to be Whiplash to someone right now. You might know somebody that’s already crashed into the water and is looking down the river in desperate expectation, but they can’t see anyone yet. They may not even know what they’re looking for, but they’re looking for you.

It’s time to armor up. Don the armor of God and grab that sword of truth. You’ve got allies (or potential allies) pinned down deep behind enemy lines, and only bold action will pull them out. If you’ve got the opportunity and can take a few hits for the sake of pulling the heat off someone else, step into the line of fire. Be Whiplash to someone. They’re desperate for you to arrive in time, and you’re the best chance they’ve got.

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Expect Opposition

Capture the Flag…

I used to help out with youth group at our church after I finished college. One night we were playing Capture the Flag. A sidewalk ran between the parking lot and the church. The way we played, the sidewalk served as the boundary between the two sides. Each team had a flag that they put deep in their own territory. To win, someone on your team had to get to the opponent’s flag, grab it, and make it back across the sidewalk. Get tagged by anyone, and you go to jail, even if you’re holding the flag.

It was fun to see the different strategies people used. Most of the time people would venture just over the line, and see how far they could get before someone chased them. Sometimes people would just saunter across and act like they were on the other team. Once in awhile everyone would bunch up and make a run for it, with the outer people protecting the people on the inside of the crowd.

I remember one time we had a pretty slow-moving game going. The only action was at the border, where people would act like they were about to take off running into enemy territory, without ever actually doing anything. I don’t even know how he got over there, but suddenly I noticed a guy on my team, Chris, snag the other team’s flag and start hauling back toward our side. He cut, he juked, and got past all but one person.

There was just one girl between Chris and the sidewalk. She was all that stood in the way of Chris sealing victory for our team. From where I stood, I certainly couldn’t make Chris run any faster. I noticed that the lone defender didn’t yet notice what was going on behind her, because she was busy making sure that I didn’t take off into her side.

There was only one thing to do. Since she posed a threat to Chris’s victory run, I decided to do my best to distract her. All she needed to do was put a finger on Chris before he got to the sidewalk, and it would be over for us. I had to do anything I could think of to prevent her from turning her attention on him.

It didn’t matter what gender she was. It didn’t matter what race she was. None of that superficial stuff was important. The only thing that mattered was that she had the power to threaten our victory, and she was quite capable of spoiling our win.

If you’re a Christian, you have an enemy that is willing to go to great lengths to prevent you from operating at full capacity. Not only is he foaming at the mouth with visceral hate for you, but he’s intelligent, cunning, and patient. This is the worst kind of enemy there is. If you are actively following God’s calling for your life, this enemy will do whatever is in his power to distract, harass, and demoralize you. DO NOT LET HIM STOP YOU. You’ve been called to something too great for you to be stopped, sidelined, or benched. Christ’s power – the power that lives in you – is infinitely greater than your enemy’s.

In the game of Capture the Flag, it’s worth pointing out who I did NOT care about. As Chris made his dash for triumph, there were plenty of other people on the opposing team, but most of them were either unable or unwilling to play a pivotal role at that point. It’s the same thing in Spiritual Warfare. If you’re pretty much a Christian for only an hour a week on Sunday mornings, let’s be honest, you don’t pose much of a threat to the enemy. On the other hand, if you’re out there telling people about Jesus, if you’re someone who helps minister to others, if you’re someone who tries to spur other Christians on, I can guarantee that the enemy sees you as a threat, and he will almost certainly expend resources to try to derail you somehow. Challenge yourself to answer the question “am I worth distracting?”

If you believe that becoming a Christian meant that your life would become easier, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. Don’t expect things to get easier in your Christian life; expect them to get harder! The thing is, though, that as you grow and mature in Christ…as He brings you through progressively more challenging assignments, you learn to trust Him. You have hope. You learn to recognize that the distractions will fade if you just…hold…fast. Whatever it is that’s in short supply – the strength, the financial resources, the endurance – it will be there when you need it. Just…hold…on.

And because I know someone will want closure…yes, we won the game. I ran into enemy territory, intentionally staying a little too close to the defender. I figured I’d lure her one way, and Chris would go the other way, but instead Chris kept me between him and her. Either way, he made it back to the border and we won the game. But don’t let that little story distract from the point I’m making. Through all the stuff of life that can choke out your efforts to glorify Christ and His kingdom…keep your eye on the prize. Just…hold…on.