The Battle and It's Wounded Soldiers

Sometimes people are so convinced that if you're not in a church that you are somehow in retreat, but that's not what I am finding among the believers that I know who don't belong to an Institutional Church. Yes, there are many wounded soldiers and sadly most of them have been wounded by those we thought were on the same team. Is there any other religion that shoots it's own soldiers when they're down than Christianity?

There's a battle raging within Christianity today and it is crippling the momentum that should be advancing on the field. Christianity has become Churchianity in many places all over the world and their focus left Christ a long time ago. Now our wounded soldiers are having to deal with how to be strategically wise in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from the very 'brethren' we fought alongside for so many years.

I've never served in the military, but I've read and studied enough to know that not every branch serves in some capacity. Each one specializes in a specific area and if each branch could work together in supporting one another we can become quite powerful to the pulling down of strongholds once again. But somewhere along the way they forgot about pulling down strongholds and they are more concerned with recruiting people into their branches to just increase numbers. I remember meeting with a recruiter for the Air Force when I was 18 years old. I wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force. The recruiter gave me all the information, but asked me to be sure this was the branch I really wanted to be a part of. There are other branches I could have chosen and I still would have been on the same team, The United States of America. Now that I think about it, you don't have to be in any military branch in order to be on this team, even the civilians are still on the same team and our taxes pay for those soldiers. We all need one another.

So I try to think about this in terms of my faith and the fellowships we all form in our own towns. We each have a function and God will place us where He wants us. There are also wounded soldiers who have been inflicted great harm at the hands of other soldiers and some abusive leaders have misused their positions to punish unjustly. There is corruption all around us and it has been said many times that an outside enemy doesn't have the power to destroy us, the power to destroy comes from within it's own department.

We each have a function and we need to discover what that is through God's Spirit guiding us. Maybe you feel like you are a wounded soldier never able to get back in the battle...but may I remind you of something the apostle Paul said? He said "Love never ends". {1 Corinthians 13} The command to love remains steadfast and there is where we can be of use in this multifaceted ministry of reconciliation. Even the military hospitals have doctors, nurses, and staff to help the wounded to heal...they're still all a part of the progress of defending freedom.

If God reveals to you that you have wounded one of our own, could you seek Him in depth on how you can reconcile? Even if you agree to disagree, can it be done in love and through peace? Lets remain linked arm in arm advancing on the field in the victory that has already been given to us through Christ. The freedom in Him to love one another and help spread the Gospel.. Christ came to set us free.

~Sis