A New Kind of Soldier

The woman of Samaria said to him, Why do you, a Jew, make a request for water to me, a woman of Samaria? She said this because Jews have nothing to do with the people of Samaria. In answer Jesus said, If you had knowledge of what God gives freely and who it is who says to you, Give me water, you would make your prayer to him, and he would give you living water. (John 4:9-10 BBE)

One of the most common prayers that we pray in reaction to surprising or tragic situations is the “why” prayers. Nearly everyone has heard them. They come in different forms and sometimes using different words, but underlying all of them is this one word, why.

So I ask the next question, Why do we ask the why prayers? Why is it so important to us, so compelling for us to know why things happen the way they do?

Even more illusive is the deeply entrenched assumptions behind these kinds of prayers. When we emphatically demand to know why God allowed such terrible things to happen to us, implied in most of these prayers is the belief that God willed it to happen to us. Nearly everyone is quick to blame God for most of the bad things that happen to them while most of the good things of life are chalked up to rewards for our own ability to look out for ourselves, our skill to earn good things to enjoy or even just good luck. But when bad things happen that seem unexplainable, it is so natural to immediately blame God and demand to know why He is treating us this way.

But interestingly this is not exactly the case in this story. In fact, it seems that this woman is so used to bad things happening to her, to being rejected by others that she has come to the place in her life where the unusual and unexplainable are the good things or the affirmations that might come her way. She is so used to fear, rejection and shame that it has become the norm in her life, what is expected and unquestioned. So when a person comes along who is positioned to be the most likely to reject, ignore and shame her suddenly acts just the opposite, her surprise and shock elicits the why question in reverse.

Why is something positive happening to me?

Why is a man treating me with respect?

Why is a Jew not prejudiced against me as a Palestinian?

There must be a hidden motive here because everyone uses me for their advantage. So what's in it for Him? This is a new approach that I am not familiar with, so what is really going on here?

I have observed that over the years people generally have come up with their own answers for the why prayers both for themselves and for others around them. Unfortunately many of these answers are based on very distorted and sick pictures of God that further darken our heart's opinions about Him. Even though many of them appear on the surface to be plausible answers and maybe even complimentary for God, if the underlying assumptions are examined they actually portray God as having sadistic characteristics and motives.

God took your child in this tragic accident because He wanted them in heaven with Him.

God is teaching you a lesson. When you learn your lessons then things will be better again.

God is punishing you for something bad you have done. Repent or worse things will happen to you.

God is angry with you because you are a bad person.

God is showing you how worthless you are.

While most of us may not resonate with all of these concepts, yet they each have been used to justify opinions about what we believe is God's harsh dealings with us or why life seems so inexplicable at times. For some deep reason our minds demand to have a logical explanation for why things happen to us the way they do. And the more I think about this the more I wonder if it is not rooted in our desires to be in control of our own lives. And to be in control we have to know the logic and reasons for why things happen.

I am not implying that it is wrong to want to know why things are and how they fit together. Some have concluded that we should just give up wanting to figure anything out and just surrender to a fatalistic view of life. Whatever happens will happen. I have no control or influence over anything so I have to just take whatever comes lying down.

Implicit in that kind of reasoning can be the belief that because I have no control then it also doesn't matter what I do. This then allows our sinful desires to run rampant and ruin our lives because we feel there is no logic, no reason and no cause and effect relationships in place. This is simply another ploy of the enemy to destroy our lives and keep us outside of God's plans and love for us.

But most of us are still trying to figure things out so we can make sense of them. But the real question goes back to why we ask the why questions in the first place. What is our real motives, the gut-level cravings that cause us to demand to have answers even when those answers are often very flawed? Are we even willing to allow the Spirit of God to take us to those deeper places inside of us where our true motives try to hide under the logic and reasons and simplistic explanations that we operate under day by day?

I believe there are times when the why questions are actually authentic expressions of a readiness to accept new explanations, new views of what God is really like. And while most of the why questions are often rhetorical and are more along the line of expressions of anger against God, some why questions lead to an honest challenging of our current belief systems, a real questioning of our definitions of reality, an opening of the heart to think in totally new ways. We are sometimes ready to allow many of our previous conclusions to come up for genuine reexamination and to consider that maybe we are actually wrong about our opinions about life, about reality and most importantly about what God is like and how He feels about us.

I believe that this was the case with this woman of Sychar. Jesus knew her background because the Holy Spirit had revealed it to Him. He knew the abuse, the shame, the fears and the lies about God that filled her life and her soul. But He also could see her heart, the genuine heart-longings and the honesty that was so buried under everything else that no one else had noticed it. And through the inspiration of the Spirit of God that always controlled the Son of God, Jesus was able to find possibly the only tiny entrance into her strongly barricaded heart to draw out her deepest longings through the means of curiosity which circumvented her strong defenses. In essence Jesus made an end-run around her frontal defenses and was able to take her heart captive in a few minutes with His calculated assault of compassion and love.

When Christians talk about spiritual warfare I tend to cringe much of the time because the spirit that is inherent in much of that kind of talk is usually the spirit found in the kind of wars that nations fight with each other. Being a Christian soldier is too often assumed to mean that we launch aggressive assaults on “unbelievers”, that we use force and confrontation or worse yet heap condemnation and guilt onto sinners in the false belief that this is going to terrify them into repentance and belief in God. We use harsh punishments sometimes with our children or we use passivity and indulgent laxness which can produce even worse results at times. But our methods are almost always based on confused ideas about how God treats us and His attitude towards us. In effect, we very often try to promote truth and “righteousness” by using the spirit and methods of the enemy of righteousness and then wonder why the results are not terribly effective or long-lasting.

Our methods of Christian warfare are most often ineffective or have produced Christians with an experience based more on fear than on a genuine love-relationship with Jesus because we are using the wrong spirit in our methods. The very word “warfare” throws us off because our minds immediately go down the wrong path of logic and experience whenever we use that kind of terminology. I believe it is very important that we be willing to carefully reexamine our assumptions and our spirit about the true meaning of warfare as God intended it in the Scriptures.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV)

This encounter with the woman in Samaria was a classic illustration of how God wages war. Jesus launched an all out assault on the strongholds that held this woman's heart captive to lies about life and about God. The weapons He used were radically different than the weapons of fear, force and intimidation that the world uses and the results were also radically different. When Jesus takes people captive they become love slaves for Him – not the kind of “love” slaves that perverted men think of but slaves who are hopelessly in love with One who has loved them with ultimate respect, compassion and tenderness first. The chains that bind them to Him are the cords of love responding to the love they encountered when He first loved them.

Jesus executed a battle that succeeded in capturing this woman's heart in just a few minutes. The result was astounding and highly effective. Through her capture He quickly was able to take over the whole city with His truth and presence and grace as the power of love spread like a contagious infection from one person to another in short order. When the disciples finally caught on that something was happening most of the work had already been accomplished. The skirmish was nearly over and joy and celebration were igniting all over the place.

I want to learn to fight like that. I want the love and compassion and tenderness of Jesus to flow from my life and to use me as a captive turned into a soldier of Yahweh. I want to lay aside the weapons and methods of the world and to become a safe soldier who is a channel of love and real truth, a soldier that conquers by the word of his testimony and by the blood of the Lamb. I want to be a soldier of joy that takes down every stronghold and overcomes every argument and captures every thought. I want a much deeper knowledge of God at an intimate level so that my life becomes a compelling attraction to draw others into the army of God, an army of ultimate lovers.