Here is the question:  are you really a Soldier of The Cross?

     Have you decided that He is The Truth?  Have you concluded that there is nothing else?

     If so, you have crossed The Line.   You have put on the Cloak of a servant.  You are a Living Sacrifice and are telling Him so each day.  (After all, it is your reasonable service.)

     You are in a season that leaves you feeling weak and without momentum.  You hurt.  You have prayed and you do not sense relief.  In fact, the difficulty and attack are such that you feel crippled.  Perhaps you have just lost a loved one.  Or perhaps you have gone through what you or others have labeled as a failure.

     The bottom line is, to whom do you belong?  Are you yours, or are you His?

     Soldier, when you feel as though you can do nothing, you must just do the next thing.  Of course, you can do the next thing.    It is the list of things that you can not do. 

     Just do the next thing.  Often there is release in doing the smallest things.  The discomfort does not last forever.  He sees and He cares.

     You have yielded your body and your faculties as a living sacrifice.  It means moving on by faith even when you feel paralyzed.

     Look up and move on!

     Lord Jesus, I stand before you and agree that my life is to be for you and for your purposes, whatever that means.

    
     I have seen the Love that went to The Cross.  I have seen the Love that rose again and is preparing a Place.  I have seen the Love that initiates each day and each hour.

     So desperately I need you, oh Lord.

     Teach me to wait.
     Teach me to forgive.
     Teach me to serve.
     Teach me to sing.
     Teach me to go.
     Teach me to give sacrificially.
     Teach me to speak.


     I tend to cling to the familiar and the comfortable, but as I stand before you now, by faith, I relinquish that futile right.
 

     Lord Jesus, do whatever must be done in the deepest places of my heart, in order to make me like you.
 

     No one who is taking up The Cross and following Him has a sense of being on top of everything.

     The whole self-image business is putting the cart before the horse.  Why do I need an improved self-image?  If I am insecure or somehow damaged, that needs to be addressed, but not by convincing me that I can be fixed.

     A believer with a poor self image has a problem because the scriptures teach we should not be comparing ourselves using our own standards.  

     We must be looking at the Lord and scrambling hard after Him.  When I am moving and busy with His agenda, I am not thinking about myself or feeling sorry for myself.  When I am serving others, my attention is on others, and not on myself or my issues.  Not only that, but where does the Bible say I should think highly of myself?

     Here is God's answer to the self image problem - "And He said to all, If any person wills to come after Me, let him deny himself [disown himself, forget, lose sight of himself and his own interests, refuse and give up himself] and take up his cross daily and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying also].
        Luke 9:23 (Amplified Bible)

 
     Those Christians do not have self-image problems, who are standing before the living God each day and telling Him that He can do anything with their lives. They are eager to be changed.  Eager to be like Him.  And they are not occupied with feeling, but are occupied with Him.

     We are human and we all experience failure, misunderstanding and inadequacy.  We can never be our own Everlasting Arms. 

     Security is in Him. 
     The anxiety is given to Him.
     We agree with Him in the loss.
     We agree with Him in all things and we know we are in the cleft of the Rock.

     What does the hymn say: ". . .He hideth my life with the depths of His Love. . ."

     Soldier of The Cross, it's true. It is really true. 
     Agree with Him today.
     Aloud.

     I am a conservative. 

     I see no other choice.  I am nevertheless distressed at a number of things that Christians are doing, cloaking themselves as representatives of Truth.

     Some are appointed and gifted to fight those battles.   Others have a position and take action against those who do not agree.

     Let's take abortion for example.

     What does God's Word say?   If you are His and you agree that He is sovereign, there is no question as to your personal choice or lack there of in the matter.  The problem lies with those who do not yet know they have a Savior.

     Abortion is not really a political issue, but that is the only place where there is a public forum.  So, we have an obligation to come forward and speak - even to engage in diatribe. To press and to do what can be done.

     I have met a number of Christians who are far more interested in harassing the other party than they are about praying for them.   A few years ago, a friend and I played a concert in upstate New York.  We visited with a family who had seven children and all were home schooled.  The children were well-disciplined and I was pretty impressed.  That is, until one child approached me and asked if I wanted to participate with the family fun time that weekend.   When I asked what it was, the child's eyes lit up and he said "We are going to make DR.  ***** miserable.  We'll drive by the house and holler and show him our signs.  It's so fun"

     Soldier of The Cross, Love is the issue.  Those who have no Savior can't hear.  Screaming at a deaf man does no good.  It only exhausts the noisemaker and frames him as a fool.

     The intimate relationship with the Lord is the balancing factor.  It is not the blind offender who must be pursued. It is not our place to punish those who do not agree - even those who are in serious violation of God's law.

     Don't you understand, but for Grace, you could be the offender.

     Pray, love, visit. Hand out Bibles.  Support those who are appointed by God to fight the battle.  Your job is not to bring misery, but to reveal Jesus.       

     God has given you the authority to operate in His name wherever he has put you.

     Of course, this does not mean that there is a place for a hyper spiritual display or that insensitivity can be deactivated.  It just means that when the Soldier of The Cross is in fellowship with the Lord, the ground under his feet is under the control of the Holy Spirit.

     The church, the home the workplace, the grocery store - aren't you His and doesn't He live within you?

    Thirty-three years later, I am still thanking the Lord for some folks who were bold enough to reach out to me when all they got in return was rude rebuff.   Just before I met the Lord, there were two who did not flinch, but were always available to initiate the Truth.

     Are you available? 
     Everywhere you go, people need Him.
     Everywhere.
     Everywhere.

    Soldier of The Cross, you have already rejected Security, Approval, Rank and Control as goals in your life.

     Because you have decided to follow Him, you have chosen the walk of faith as offered by Grace through the Blood of Jesus.

     So why do these things still haunt?  Because this life is about choice.

    You crossed The Line. You are held and wooed by the very One who loves you enough to allow you to choose victory over the things that produce spiritual death.

     What is the circumstance?  It must be something that looks impossible.  

    We serve a God who has identified Himself as the God of the Impossible.  Is your heart set on a particular result, or are you available to agree with Him?

     Soldier, you must let Him know, and it must be aloud.
     Today.       

    We have a God who is thorough and does an infinite and eternal work in us.

     We don't serve a band-aide Lord.  Hallelujah!

     He loves us enough to go beyond our frantic setting of boundaries and myopic flag-planting.  The goal is that God be glorified, and it is for our good.  The goal is that we be prepared for eternity.  The goal is that we be transformed into His likeness. 

     None of these things comes by merely learning about it, although there must be hearing before response.   The measureless value comes when the Soldier of The Cross is willing to be taken through the fire and, by faith, agrees with Him about it.

     In our wildest imagination, all we have is our wildest imagination.  We can't begin to design what is good for us.  But the One whose heart is ravished by our attention has already designed it.

     Are you a Soldier of His?  Have you crossed The Line?  Have you decided He can do anything with your life?  Anything?   Have you told Him so?  Aloud?

     Somehow we have a concept that His work within us is to accomplish a goal or hit a level.  That is not true.  He wants to produce His own Life in us.  That means that if we are available, we are always stretched.   It is the only way the burden is light.

     Open that door and let Him come in to sup with you.

      Lord, I am deeply grateful to be able to rest in you.  Thank you for allowing me the privilege of coming to you and trusting you with the past as well as the future.  Please teach me to lean on you more completely.

     I don't ask to understand, but I do ask to recognize you more quickly and to be keenly aware of you.  Please do whatever needs to be done in me in order to make me more like you.

     I bring you all that I have ever been or have ever had or will be.  By faith I declare that I will stand on your promise to redeem the bare patches and restore any crumbled ruins.  

     I  don't want to belong to time. 
     I want to be yours.

     Sometimes it is hard to tell what is really happening.

     The enemy is often disguised to the extent that it can be difficult to discern the source of the battering or source of distress.  And of course, he always kicks when we are down.   

     The issue is never the enemy.    The issue is always the One who holds the stars in place.   The issue is the Word of God.  The issue is Love.  The issue is obedience.

      So Soldier of The Cross, you must pray for Light to see what is really happening.  You do not need to know why and you certainly do not need to know anything right now.    He said He would never leave us nor forsake us and that our needs would be provided.  That is all we need to know.

     Absolutely, positively, we do not need to know why. And God leads on a need-to-know basis.

     So, do the next thing.  Do it with all your heart. 

     Are you tired?  Broken heart?  Grieving?  Visit the shut-in.  Offer to read a Psalm.  Go to a nursing home and ask to see the Alzheimer’s patients.  Hold their hands and tell them about Jesus.  You will be amazed at the response and the comfort and assurance in your own soul.

     Are you having financial problems?  Send money to a missionary. 

     Depressed?    Stand in front of the bathroom mirror and read Psalm 93 aloud.  Then, encourage someone else by calling or writing.

     Soldier, if there is any chance at all that you are under attack, take an opposite physical action. 

     Move!   Give!  Call!  Write!  Sing!   Pray!
     It is called "resisting the enemy" and he will flee!