If you have ever seen a movie or footage of a wartime battle, I want you to visualize as you read this writing today.  I always picture the movie “Platoon” and the night time battle that went from silence to utter chaos.  Firing guns and explosions, in the midst of a black night with no real vision, are my picture of the night battle of utter horror.  Picture that … as you read this:

In the spiritual picture of my reality, I was a sitting duck.

Mortally wounded and left for dead on the battlefield, surrounded by an enemy that was closing in, and in the darkness … I was a sitting duck for Hell.

The craving of the enemy for my demise can never be overstated.  His insatiable pursuit of my brokenness, His desire to punish me, and to shame me, and to bludgeon me … it was unquenchable.  His selfish and bitter motives without limit.

And so, my weakness, and selfish ambition, and pride, and my desire to feed my flesh … they lead me to a place of hopelessness.

In the backdrop, screaming men, and flashes of light, and the utter violence that accompanies war, they were in full force.  As men cried out for help, it was all I could do not to do the same.  And yet the silhouettes of the enemy were all around me, looking, and with each flash of life there was a new shadow, a new question, a new horror.

I was a dead man.

And then He showed up.

Fearless.

Loyal.

Single minded.

Focused.

Kneeling and calculating, the shots he fired were each perfectly on target.

And as He surveyed an impossible situation, He was there for the possible.

With total composure, He pulled the pin and threw 7 grenades to surrounding hot spots.  And as they began to explode, He moved in perfect rhythm.  I was on His shoulder and being carried through the darkness at an incredible rate.

He hurdled fallen trees, cut behind ground cover and moved through strafing bullets as if He knew how to escape them.  As we got to a place of cover, He stepped out and, again, fired His weapon with precision.  These bullets, I surmised, were not for men.  They were for the forehead of the enemy.  And He fired them perfectly.  Drawing a round to the shoulder and right thigh, He barely flinched, almost as if He knew they were coming.  It was as if He knew that to protect ME, it would cost HIM.

And before I could process, or as I was processing, I was back on His shoulder and moving.

The blood and wounds that were on Him did not deter Him.  He moved with single minded purpose, and before I knew it, I was on the rescue chopper, and as I looked up, so were the other men in our unit, ALL OF THEM.

As we began ascent He was back to the advancing enemy.  He was the tip of the sword.  And His goal was single minded.  Fight off an advancing enemy at the cost of Himself, that we might live.

As we began to fly away, His fate was painted.  And they advanced on a broken body to finish Him.

Not swiftly, but slowly.  They punched His wounded body, and spit on Him.  And cut Him.  And they celebrated in His pain, and His shame, and His exposure.  They celebrated His waning moments like it was the greatest thing they had ever been a part of.

And I flew away to be rescued.

Revelation 5 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

I do not worship a God who is beyond me.  I worship a God who came into the jungle and rescued me.  At His demise, He gave me life.  At His demise, He gave me a second chance.  At His demise I am free to choose, or to reject, Him.

Before you come at me with science, let me come at you with a little of my own.

We, as people, are the most finely tuned instrument in all of the universe.  Our eyes focus, our thumbs operate to grip, and open things.  Our bodies are put together like a city of 3,000,000 people:  Waste disposal, nutrition disbursement, electrical power, the ability to heal, and the ability to fight outside intruders.  Our planet rolls around the sun at an alarming rate of speed and gravity keeps us from flying off into space.

Before you call me an idiot for worshiping a God I can’t see (I am an idiot) I say that you breathe an air we can’t see, you receive information from waves you can not see, and you listen to a radio that is unseen.

Is it really that foolish to believe that you—-were created.  Not to me.

My wife does not like halloween.  And while I am more neutral than she might be, I love that about her.  I married the most beautiful person on the planet—-she puts the important things first and the other things—not at all.  She fights for her kids and loves her God and worships in spirit and in truth.  She prays for others and contends for the good of all.  She is proof of God in her own right.

We will all face death and take a last breath.

We will all lose our chance to live in the flesh.

We will all perish.

Make sure you get in that chopper.

He didn’t rescue you because our enemy was easy.  He rescued us because, without Him, we are sitting ducks for Hell.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J