Wailing or warfare

"They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds" (Hosea 7:14).

There is a difference between wailing and warfare. I fear that there's a lot more a'wailin' than a'warrin' going on in Christendom.

You cannot always tell the difference from the outside because they both may involve tears. Yet one is darkness and the other light. One is displeasing to God and the other pleasing. The noble warfare that God loves is both the simplest act in the world and the most elusive among men:

"Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (Romans 10:6).

The Lord simply wants us to roll temptation over into prayer. As often as an unbiblical thought or feeling seeks to have you, roll it over. Whether it's depression or despair or fatalism, roll it over. The Apostle Paul pleads with us to see how accessible it is:

"'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart' (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)" (Romans 10:8).

For some reason that you can probably get a Ph.D. for analyzing, we Christians would rather let ourselves be hagridden for hours on end by a vague worry or a fear or a sorrow or regret or other temptation than bring the matter to articulation before God.

This is in spite of hundreds of sermons over the course of an average churchgoer's life on the subject of the Ephesians 6 armor, which are all active and aggressive weaponry. As my brother Marc likes to say, "When all is said and done, there will be more said than done."

For my money, the entire Christian life is contained in that one act, on your bed, at 2 a.m., in the dark. While nobody sees you but God, you are either living out authentic Christianity or living a sham. There are no larger tests.

I found that I have had to train myself to do spiritual warfare. It did not come naturally. I did not drift into it. I had not observed anyone do it (though you can generally sense when a person has). And I will tell you what it required. I had to come to believe what Scripture says about the origins of my thought life. The things that assail my mind all through the day are not just innocuous musings but suggestions of "principalities" and "powers" and "rulers of the darkness" (Ephesians 6:12).

The Apostle James concurs. Certain lines of thought are "demonic" (James 3:15).

Galatians 5:17 describes a constant tug-of-war in your heart, not a dainty philosophical debate. The one voice is urgently speaking God's truth to you, the other urging the reasonableness of ungodly desires. Your soul is the prize of war.

Once I believed Ephesians 6:12 regarding the origins of temptation, I got on board with the armor too. It is a multi-pronged offensive, and I find that no one single article of weaponry is enough. A major temptation calls for both prayer and muscular applications of truth. That truth consists of everything you can think of about God---for instance, that nothing is impossible with Him.

Like any muscle that is not much used, the muscle of faith and prayer may feel stiff at first. Constant practice makes perfect. You get to recognize a thought from hell and your reaction time gets faster. I suppose it is like any other kind of warfare.

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