TRAINING TO REIGN

TRAININ G TO REIGN

                I remember being drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. We got hustled into buildings where our heads were shaved, our clothes removed and new army green clothes were put on. Drill sergeants yelled in our faces at every turn. We were shoved through chow lines and given five minutes to eat, we were up at 4 AM doing pushups and running for miles in the darkness of morning. We were in classes. We were exhausted, we were stripped of our identity until it seemed that we were nothing but government owned meat at first… but something began to happen to us over time. We got stronger. We started to excel. We began to march in step. Our drill sergeants yelled less. We were becoming soldiers.                 We began to understand that this training would save our lives in battle… make us more effective in combat … give us a chance to come home alive.

                Just so is our being born again? We die to our old training, or old lives, our old identity. We come under the discipline of the Lord. We struggle to hear His voice in the clamor of life. It is not natural to want to give up our identity. We don’t understand how it works. We chafe at the disciplines that bring our flesh to death. We may balk at the idea of dying, of living as not I but Christ. (Gal. 2:20) We thrash about hoping that there is some other way. But in time we begin to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit rather than against Him. At first it seems that we have lost our own identity. But in time we begin to take on our new identity as ambassadors of the family of God.

                A transformation begins to take place in us. We begin to crave things that once bored us. We begin to look forward eagerly to our personal times of worship and Bible study. We begin to live in eager expectation for our fellowship with other like-minded believers. Soon our lives become consumed with a passion for Jesus as His power to save becomes more clearly understood and known to us. We are becoming more than draftees. We are becoming soldiers of the Lord, fighting the good fight of faith. We are now pressing toward the mark of our high calling in Christ Jesus. ( Phil. 3:14) More and more we begin to leave those things behind that once encumbered us. More and more we begin to run the race to win.

                Our heroes are now those who are on the trail ahead of us. Our worship and thankfulness and praise have become focused on the One, the only champion of our faith… Jesus the Christ.

                “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”  1 Cor. 12:11

                “He, (The Holy Spirit) begins to open our ears to His instruction.” Job 36:10

                We no longer chafe at the bit. We don’t need to be yelled at any more. We have been put through the paces… coming out of Egypt, first as slaves, then as servants, then as bond-servants, then as Battle hardened soldiers and finally as sons and daughters of the King.

                Words cannot express how grateful I am to be on this journey. After all the things I have done in my life to bring dishonor to the name of the Lord, He has nevertheless embraced me, called me and put me in His training camp. We are in training to reign.

                It is amazing to me that God came into this world as one of us. He came to call the poor, the lost, the struggling, the blind and the lame to repentance.  He came to turn ordinary people into sons and daughters of the Most High God.

HEROES    by Rick Lange

Sportsmen and actors are heroes of sorts.

Football and baseball and Wimbledon courts

Station to station our remote helps us roam

But my heroes are closer to home.

How about the wife who will stand by your side?

How about the husband that still loves his bride?

How about the son who is steadfast and true?

How about the daughter who looks after you?

These are my heroes for sure

And there are so many more.

How about the mother whose love never dies?

How about the father who views you with pride?

How about the grandparents counting the days?

Sharing their wisdom in so many ways?

These are real heroes to me…

The kind that I want to be.

We worship the ones who have fortune and fame.

We gaze at their posters and call them by name.

But heroes are much more than this.

They’re often the ones that we miss.

How about the policemen and firemen too?

Postmen who bring all your mail to you?

How about the preachers devoted to truth?

 How about the teachers that are guiding our youth?

These are the ones we should praise.

They are heroes in so many ways.

 How about the soldiers risking their lives?

How about those who make forks and knives?

Factory workers and there is a bunch…

How about the waitress who brings you your lunch?

The heroes we often ignore

These are my heroes for sure!

God bless the heroes who pass through our lives.

God bless the husbands and God bless the wives.

God bless the children whom we all adore

These are the ones for whom we thank the Lord.

                I like to think of God’s Remnant people as a rag-tag band of intrepid soldiers, carrying their wounded… dodging bullets and land mines to make it to the LZ. (Landing Zone) Tomorrow we will go out to fight another day, but for right now we are bringing ourselves and our wounded to the field hospital… the MASH unit we call “Prayer Meeting.”