The Essence of Fellowship

I've mentioned a couple times before that Annie and I are part of an awesome small group. This week brought more reminders of the power of fellowship, of what it means to fight for others and to be fought for.

As all this has been going on over the past couple days I've found myself thinking of this quote from the St. Crispian's Day speech in Henry V just before the battle of Agincourt. It sums up perfectly what Christian fellowship is supposed to be about and it only gets more powerful every time I read it.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Recovering The Spiritual Middle Ground

For the past couple weeks I've been reading Ed Murphy's The Handbook For Spiritual Warfare. Towards the beginning of the book he spends some time looking at spiritual worldviews. He points out that we have a tendency, especially in Western theology, to acknowledge both the spiritual and physical worlds but deny the middle ground where they interact. The result is that while we believe in angels, demons and all the rest we tend not to see that world as having much of an impact on our day to day lives.

I really think he's got a point. We've lost something both in our theology and in practice. The Life that God has for us is fiercely opposed and if we're to find it we're going to have to recover the middle ground between the physical and spiritual worlds where the two interact.

As I've thought about this, I've been rethinking the story of Balaam in Numbers. In case you need a refresher the basic gist of it is this: Israel's enemies hire Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam is on his way to do the job when his donkey stops dead in its tracks. He beats the donkey but it won't move. Then God opens the donkey's mouth and it tells Balaam that there's an angel that's going to kill him if he takes one more step, that God is not about to let him curse His people.

It's a great story. Normally when we hear it our reaction is something like, "that's pretty neat that God made the donkey talk!" And while that is pretty cool, the question I keep asking myself is why did God make the donkey talk? If we live in a world where the physical and spiritual don't meet and mix, where spiritual warfare is the exception not the rule, where curses don't matter, then what possible difference would it make if Balaam went on his mission and cursed Israel?

The implication of the story is that what Balaam did or did not do mattered. He was a man gifted with being able to interact in the spiritual world and the choices he made about how to use that gift had huge ramafications in both the spiritual and physical worlds.

We might be uncomfortable with it in our scientific, "enlightened" era but that is still the reality today. Angels, demons, curses and blessings not only exist they impact our lives in ways we're not even aware of. We are not just physical beings, we are spiritual beings and those two aspects of ourselves are not all that separate. Spiritual warfare is not an option, we live in a spiritual war whether we acknowledge it or not.

There are a lot of heavy implications here and I'm all too aware of how the enemy loves to exploit them for fear. I want to make it clear that while this stuff is true, God's love it truer. The point of recovering the spiritual middle ground isn't fear, it's to wake us up so we can fight the battle and step even deeper into the Life God has for us.

Changing How We Look At Christmas

I love Christmas and this time of year. This year is shaping up to be especially fun. Not only is it Ellie's first Christmas, but it's our first year in our house. This afternoon we bought our first live Christmas tree and decorated it.

But for as much as I love Christmas, I think there's something missing in the way we look at it. I'm not talking about any type of secularization of the holiday, but about the way Christians look at Christmas. I'd say that the typical Christian view of Christmas involves the nativity, the Christmas story as found in Luke and Matthew, songs like Away in the Manger, Silent Night, etc.

Now, all of those things are wonderful and true and I don't want to diminish them at all. But they're also incomplete. For as wonderful and beautiful as songs like Away in the Manger are, their message doesn't come close to capturing what Christmas is all about.

At it's center, Christ's birth was an act of war.

We need to look at the story as part of the Larger Story and to do that we need to go all the way back to Creation. When God created the world He gave authority over it to mankind through Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, as we all know, that didn't last for long. Adam and Eve sinned but their sin wasn't only about their personal fall or even the fall of the human race. In their sin, they gave away all the authority God had given to them and Satan became the prince of this earth.

But God promised that wouldn't be the end. He promised that He would win that authority back.

Christmas was the beginning of God's crusade against the kingdom of darkness the enemy had spent the last few thousand years building on Earth. Christmas was an invasion, the start of a war that's been going on ever since.

The enemy knew what was happening. We need to remember that the Christmas story doesn't end with the shepherds and wise men stopping by. Satan used Herod, his pawn, to murder every baby boy around Bethlehem. There was far more going on there than an arrogant ruler with wounded pride. It was a counterstrike by the forces of hell against the birth of Christ.

And, of course, the story doesn't end there. This battle is the context of all of Jesus's life and ministry. When He is tempted in the wilderness, Satan tempts Him with all the kingdoms of the world, all the authority Jesus came to win back, but with one condition. Satan stays on top and Jesus bows to Him. He refused but in His death, resurrection and ascension He won back once and for all the authority, power and rule Adam gave away at the beginning of the world.

Now, 2,000 years later, the war that began on Christmas between the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of Heaven is still going on. The story of Christmas is not over.

Again, I don't want to come across as negative on the traditional Christian view of Christmas. In fact, I don't want to criticize it at all. I simply want to point out that it is insufficient and add in what's missing. So this Christmas season, let's remember that Christ's birth is part of a larger story, a bloody clash of kingdoms. It's a story we are a part of and we are called to join in the fight, to defeat the enemy and to rescue others from the kingdom of darkness.

"I'm On Aslan's Side"

I spent a few days this week under a pretty heavy cloud of warfare. It was the sort of stuff that just seems to cut you off from God. You try and pray and you have to fight tooth and nail just to get a glimpse of His presence. You try and read your Bible and it just seems dry. Those of you who've experienced this sort of warfare know exactly what I'm talking about.

Going through a few days of fighting this spiritual blockade is a brilliant reminder of how we need to daily fight for our freedom. We need to guard our hearts with the utmost vigilance and constantly be centering ourselves on God. In the middle of these spiritual storms it is very possible to walk on water but only if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ.

As I was in the middle of this, I kept thinking about C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair. In that book Jill, Eustace and the eternally pessimistic marsh-wiggle Puddleglum are sent by Aslan to find the lost prince Rilian. Eventually, they do find him but he's held captive underground by a witch. As they try to escape with him, he puts a spell over them and begins to tell them that there is no such thing as Aslan, or the sun, or the trees, or any world besides her dark and miserable underground kingdom. Her magic is like a dark cloud cutting them off from the truth. And it almost works. Then Puddleglum, barely grasping to the last shred of truth he can find, gives this amazing speech:

Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.

How wonderful it is that our subjective experiences don't define reality. When I was battling earlier this week, there were a few times when everything I've learned from God recently felt untrue. It felt like make believe. But in my heart I knew that even if it was make believe, living as though it was true made for a better reality than the hell the enemy was trying to sell me on.

God will sometimes feel far away, or simply altogether not there. When that happens resolve yourself to be on Aslan's side even if Aslan doesn't exist. The rich and satisfying life Jesus promises in John 10:10 might seem like a naive dream and his kingdom like a fantasy. Live as a Narnian even if there isn't any Narnia. Fight for your freedom and remember the truth.

Remember.