Prime Directives

             Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

            For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:29)

 

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

 

                Continuing yesterday’s discussion of courage, a logical question that should be answered is For what do we need the courage to do? Long before we go to war, we must become soldiers, and that requires courage in many ways. The first is that it requires that we leave home, family, friends, and in some ways, all that we hold familiar and dear to go to boot camp. The instructors make it very clear immediately that all those things you loved are not in the boot camp. In other words, in order to be a soldier, all of our idols, big and little, must be given up. The only things that matter are the honor and safety of what we are training to fight for.

          Similarly, if we hope to be an effective Christian, we must renounce what is not God and cling to the One who is. In The Christian in Complete Armor, this is referred to as renouncing our bosom sins, and described using the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Isaac was not a bosom sin, but he had the potential to take God’s place in Abraham’s heart and therefore be the key by which the door to Abraham’s sin could be opened.

          A second directive for Christians is to conform our lives to Christ. In a boot camp, once again, recruits are not permitted to behave however they would like. They are told when to get up, when to go to bed, when and what to eat. They are effectively treated like pieces of machinery with no identity, and in the process, they are supposed to shift the source of their identity from themselves and the things in their past to the military. They are to become soldiers, a band of brothers whose sole purpose is to serve their country.

          Likewise, as Christians, we are called to give up the image with which we grew up, to give up our identities as members of our family, of our communities, of our ethnic or historical background. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, etc. We are to be Christians as our sole identity.

          A third requirement is that we sidestep stumbling blocks. This was addressed in an earlier post: Running The Race

            The fourth requirement is that we trust God in every circumstance. Once again, in a boot camp situation, recruits are required to look to their commanders and to the military to meet their needs. Turning elsewhere is a betrayal – a treason. In a similar way, if we look to ourselves or to anything other than God we commit treason against Him.

          Lastly, we are advised to keep on keeping on. Being a soldier isn’t something one can do when one feels like it. You keep doing it when the going gets tough. You keep doing it when you think failure is inevitable. And when you fail, you get up and keep going again. It’s like the story of the man who was told to push a boulder. After years, he took his failure to God. In all those years, he had not moved the boulder an inch. But he had developed strong muscles. This is what Christ calls us to.