April Spiritual ethoughts Monthly

POWs 

Sometimes I wonder if non-believers think that Christianity is “no fun”, or in most ways unappealing, because instead of living the abundant life Jesus brought from heaven to earth, Christians have become Prisoners of War in our battle of Good and Evil. Do Christians seem a bit dull? Do they seem sort of nasty? Do they seem like whiners? Do they pick on each other? Do they, and do you, down deep in your heart secretly wish for more? We’ve sort of been captured.

It’s not that we’ve become prisoners because our enemy is more powerful, but we’ve willing walking into a prison camp of sorts. Or more likely, we’ve subtly slipped into a cell of lethargy. For some, this happens in the same way a coal chills as it is separated the warmth of live briquettes. It boils down to authentic accountability. The masks stay on, and so no one knows the real struggles. Sometimes we are simply prisoners in a chamber where the doors are already wide open. We merely stay where we are most comfortable.

Regardless of the manner in which it happens, from time to time, the abundant life is not the life we live. Troubles crowd in, doubt sways us, business steals us away, illness plagues us, sin besets us, people hurt us, or in some other ways we lose focus. Some way we miss that our source of life abundant is the only sate for our thirst. Jesus, our Living Water, is the Fountain we must ingest frequently, daily. We don’t do it to satisfy a checklist, but to quench ourselves. To live.

It’s no wonder so many Christians are Missing in Action, or Prisoners of War. We strive so hard to keep a grip on all the moving parts of our lives, and the whole time, we slip into the dehydrated, mundane, un-abundant, and too-thirsty-too-soon-life without the best water.

I confess I noticed this in myself. For a long while I’ve been reading and writing voraciously. Before that, I was serving on a missions trip and before that I was teaching adult Sunday school class. It’s been an invigorating time. I’ve needed to dig in the Word, research, read, listen, dialogue, study, learn, and apply so much. But, now I’m in a waiting period. I’m writing, but not that much. I’m reading, but not as much. I gotten my textbooks, but I have not really cracked them open. I’m in the Word, but I’m not soaking it up like before. Honestly, it shows. I can tell. I’ve slipped behind the bars like a kind of captive. I’m not in solitary confinement. It’s more like Martha Stewart’s interment, but I’ve decided I want out, now that I see I’m here.

I realized this was going on by simply noting the change in my attitudes and fervor. I saw that I had slipped behind some bars of increased sarcasm, bitterness, and old insecurities. Some zeal had leaked out of the cracked pot, that is me, too. It’s humbling to be so cracked. It’s doesn’t take too much time to realize just how much I need God. I’m empty faster than sand in an egg timer. It’s when I ignore that time frame that I get myself into bigger scrapes. I know sin will crouch at my door. that how it works. A dehydrated jailbird, with a modicum of sense, has to start gulping and get out quick.

For me, slipping into POW status might involve a bout of resorting to mechanisms to figure my way out of things. These are my old habits and ways of dealing with obstacles that don’t submit everything to God right away. Simple put, I put my self on the throne. It will be in simple and subtle ways, like harboring pride, slacking in my communication with God, anesthetizing pain through various and inane distractions, and the list goes on. This is not an abundant life. This is just the life I’ll settle for when holding God’s hand seems too bothersome, or disciplined. It’s the lesser life I’ll live when I give into  myself a bit too much, and start to, literality sicken on myself. I need to be saved from myself, from the prison of myself.

I know this is the bigger war at stake. It is the more common one. The one between Good and Evil is fought in the skirmishes on the battlefields of Self firstly, and most frequently. These often-overlooked tussles lead to the bigger theaters of combat, which are the powerful choices, the ones that can bring true destruction or restoration in one's life. Victory in the small continual contests are really the only way we can avoid having to fight and lose the worst wars. We were never meant to be prisoners. Jesus came to set us free. We can be free indeed.

©2007

Lisa DeLay