Fill Me or Kill Me

"I Want it All,

I Want it All,

I Want it All...

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and I Want it Now."

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("I Want it All" by Queen)

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You will remember that we have said that it is the Way of a Warrior to never surrender one inch of ground uncontested - that such a one would never relinquish the ground they have gained without an all-out, furious battle to see the outer defenses hold. And you will remember that in the terms of what we are undergoing in the Realm of the Supernatural, this refusal to retreat or concede or acquiesce that marks the commitment of the True Warrior is best defined by calling it the battle against resignation.

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A battle almost all of us are losing.

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Not deliberately or intentionally, of course. We have no idea that we are doing it, you know: resigning ourselves to less Life than what our Heavenly Father longs to give us. To less Life than He has promised to give us. But we are living in that sort of resignation. Oh yes. We most certainly are. And the reason is not difficult to find:

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We are being taught to.

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Imagine that you had never been to a church service, never read a Christian book, never heard a Christian speaker or teacher - never met another person who claimed to be a Christian at all, in fact. Imagine that all you had to go on was the Bible. The words of Jesus. His promises. The examples of His promises made good in the lives of His small Fellowship of friends in the years following His ascension.

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Now tell me:

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How close is what you have to what you see being offered?

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Do you have the "full measure of His joy" (John 17:13) that Jesus wanted for His friends? Or have you bought into these new definitions of "joy" that make it so much easier to believe that we somehow possess it, and yet feel so...joyless?

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Do you "have life to the full" (John 10:10)? Jesus said that this was why He came. Can it really be okay to have surrendered this promise...or pretended that we have experienced it when we have not?

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Did you "receive Power when the Holy Spirit fell on you" (Acts 1:8)? Or have you listened to a million rationalizations explaining why the one thing that your life most lacks is Power...but that it is somehow okay?

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Are your prayers "powerful and effective" (James 5:16)? Do things change when you pray? Do the lame walk, the cancer patients go into remission, the AIDS victims revive to complete health? And when did you stop wishing that you could do all that?

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Have you been "transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:1)? Or do you still feel like following God's ways requires a lot of external behaviour modification, and that deep down you are still the same old unholy slug you always knew yourself to be before you came to Christ?

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The list could go on...

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And over and above all that, there is this whole "God is silent right now; He feels so far away I can't seem to find Him; my love has grown cold that I can't feel a thing," stuff that is passing around the church faster than an epidemic of the swine flu. Sure, almost everybody you know has come down with it. But it is the complete opposite of practically everything Jesus came to bring us. When did we decide that living like that was okay with us?

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Ask yourself honestly:

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Just how many things did Jesus promise that I'm not experiencing?

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Go back and cruise through the New Testament with the innocent, trusting, hopeful heart of a child. Compile a list in a notebook of all the things it appears that God is offering, and that you desperately want, but aren't experiencing right now. So you have no power? This is God's plan? You don't know hope, you don't know joy, you hardly know love? And this pleases Him? His Holy Spirit is more a theological theory than a Comforter, Counselor, Teacher and Guide? Just one of those "optional" things that you think it'd be best to just let slide?

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A Warrior wouldn't abandon these promises un-fought for.

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And a Warrior wouldn't be daunted by the fact that he doesn't know one man in ten thousand who has them.

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Welcome to the Warrior's Path. Don't expect anyone to commiserate with your resignation here. You will find no rest on this Road until you have found all that Jesus' promised. Or died trying.

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In the inspired words of Tim McGraw: "How bad do you want it?"

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Quickening the pace with eager feet,

Derrick and David