PICK A FIGHT!

One of the most memorable scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies is when William Wallace (Braveheart), wearing some rather cheesy blue face-paint, makes his grand entrance in front of the Scottish army out on the side of a hill. Wallace makes a stirring speech to the Scots about freedom (and includes a rather tacky reference to flatulence) and the warriors from the Scottish clans eat it up. I like to think that some of my distant relatives on my mother’s side of the family were there (Mom came from the Walker clan of Scotland). In the movie, the Scottish nobles then go to talk with the commander of the English army, who was prepared to bribe them with titles and land if they would abandon the fight.

Wallace and his men are left behind to watch when suddenly Braveheart breaks rank and rides toward the private meeting in the center of the field. One of Wallace’s men yells at him, “Where do you think you’re going?” and Wallace replies, “To pick a fight!” And pick a fight he did! After rudely insulting the English king, Wallace led the Scots as the two armies rushed into combat and for one of the first times in history, an English army was defeated by the clans of Scotland.

For several years I have been writing blog articles about the coming storms, and they are partly upon us. One of the manifestations of the storms is a tsunami of sickness and disease striking God’s people. The last few months have been filled with urgent prayer requests from friends and acquaintances because of the attacks of serious illness. All across the body of Christ, we are hearing about people being struck down by sickness.

To put it bluntly, the church is under attack! What are we going to do about it?

I have a suggestion. Let’s do a William Wallace and pick a fight!

We need to have a whole lot of righteous warriors stand up and say, “That’s enough. We’ll take no more of this. It’s time for war!” Right now the enemy is bringing the fight to us and we are rather passively letting him do so. Our passivity and lack of prayer have made the western church an easy target for his devices. We are fighting a defensive war, battling only when we are attacked, when we ought to be on the offensive. We need to start aggressively taking the fight to the enemy. If we are going to let him pick the time and place, he is going to decimate our ranks and keep us away from our fields of service and our destined goals. We need to break from the crowd, put on our war paint, and go “pick a fight.”

The Apostle Paul’s writings are filled with the imagery of athletic competition and warfare. Paul speaks of running the race and fighting the good fight, so it is not difficult to visualize him as a scrapper, a fighter. His son in the gospel, Timothy, was a more timid soul, less aggressive than Paul, so in his first letter to his young protégé, Paul charged him to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Frankly, I get a little disgusted with all the commentators and preachers who want to civilize this statement by putting a heavy athletic competition spin to it. In athletics, your opponent is your rival and after the competition, you are expected to shake hands and exchange a friendly greeting. In real life, our opponent is not our rival—he is our enemy. He is a terrorist and his goal is to dominate and destroy us. Our fight is not a friendly competition and I am not going to engage him in a friendly, competitive way. I’m going to fight him because people’s well-being and their eternal destinies are at stake.

Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). We must read this verse correctly. This is not a “hold the fort” or “just hold on till Jesus comes” mentality. This is a clear statement that hell cannot hold out against an attacking church.

In Deuteronomy 20, instructions on conduct in wartime were given to the children of Israel. One of the tactics they were instructed to use was the siege (20:12, 19-20). In war the attacking force would surround the enemy stronghold and lay siege, sometimes for weeks and months—even years. The siege did at least two things. First, it confined the enemy to a specific area and, second, it eventually led to the destruction of that stronghold.

When Joshua led the children of Israel to Jericho, he had them lay siege to that city (Joshua 6). Jericho was captured and destroyed by the faithful persistence of God’s people as they were obedient to His commands. We celebrate the “Jericho March” but in doing so, we miss the point!

Let’s take the fight to the enemy. Let’s lay siege to his evil works and begin a holy bombardment that doesn’t stop until Jesus returns. Let’s raise up a standard of faith based on God’s Word and the triumph of Christ over death and hell. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

The war is coming to your front door. You can wait until it moves into your household or you can move preemptively against the forces of hell.

It’s time for us to put on the war paint and go out and pick a fight! To my Canadian buddies, “Put down your wife’s lipstick—that’s not the war paint I was talking about!”