Warrior Training

WARRIOR TRAINING

Oh how I wish I could say that this is my wisdom but, I cannot get my mind off of this section from John Eldredge’s  book The Way of the Wild Heart on Warrior Training from the chapter “Raising the Warrior” (starting on pg. 168).  It is lengthy, but well worth the read.

I watch with such longing those warrior training scenes I mentioned earlier (from movies)—Godfrey and Balian, Morpheus and Neo, Tocoa.  For years I yearned for someone to take me on as their apprentice in the way of the Warrior.  As I thought about this chapter—and our fatherlessness and our predicament—I wondered, How does God bring that to a man, when there is no sort of training for spiritual warriors like this? Then it felt as though the Holy Spirit was gently but firmly directing my thoughts to my own life.  As I thought back over the past twenty years, I saw that nearly everything I’ve learned as a Warrior, I’ve learned on the field of battle, in the school of reality, the classroom of my life.  I realized the answer to the question:  “How does God raise the Warrior in a man?”

Hardship.

Something in you knows it’s true.  I think this is where we have most misinterpreted what God is up to in our lives.  As long as we are committed to the path of least resistance, to making our lives comfortable, trial and tribulation will feel unkind.  But, if we are looking for a dojo in which to train as a Warrior, well then—this is the real deal.  What better means than hardship?  What a better way to train a Warrior than by putting a man in situation after situation where he must fight?

I was on an overseas trip a few months ago, scouting the readiness of a country for a mission we had in mind.  As I drove with my colleagues to the airport, we asked Jesus for any advance words he might have for us (a very wise thing to do before going into battle).  Give way to nothing.  I had no idea what was about to happen, but in retrospect I understand why he said to nothing, rather than to certain things in particular, because it felt like I was hit with everything but the kitchen sink.  Our hosts were good men, but driven, neither Cowboys nor Warriors, in many ways still trying to implement the business model to Christianity.  The enemy whispers, You know more than they do, and the pull to make a subtle, arrogant agreement set in, which would have ruined our relationship.  Dismiss them, he says.  No, I reply.  No arrogance.  Five minutes later it turned to , They are dismissing you.

We walked into a hotel and the receptionist looked up. “May I help you?”  She was the mirror image of a girl I dated in high school, before I’d become a Christian.  The enemy was there in a moment, using an old wound to try to usher in seduction.  Remember?  You can have that again.  First pride and now lust—how men have fallen here? “No, thank you,” I said to her.  “We’re just here for a meeting.”  One of our colleagues ended up failing to meet us there.  Judgment gives it a try:  What a jerk.  Resentment steps in:  He’s always failing you.   My father wound was abandonment, and the enemy knows that, and tries to make me feel as though my friend—and everyone else—has abandoned me.  I won’t go with that, then it’s worry  and self-reproach:  Maybe something’s wrong.  Maybe you said something that hurt him.

Someone makes a comment about the difficulty of putting on the conferences we’d planned there, and fear rushes in.  What if this doesn’t work?  There’s no guarantee, you know.  This isn’t going to work.   I fight off fear.  Ten minutes later it’s not failure, but success.  You could make a lot of money off this, you know.  It was true, we could, but that’s not why we’d come.  “Let’s cut the rate we’re charging,” I said, “Let more guys in.”  The team looked a little puzzled, and self-doubt is there:  You idiot.  You shouldn’t have said that.  I swear to you all of this took place in the first hour and a half after landing.  We had three more days to go.

In the hotel room that night, I dream of the girl in high school, wake in the dark, disoriented, in some other country in the middle of the night in a sweat, and have to pray for an hour to get back to sleep.  Resignation, which so often accompanies weariness, followed.  This isn’t worth it.  “Yes, it is,” I say aloud in my room at 3:00 a.m.  More prayer.  The following morning, I am irritated at our hosts, who locked the keys in the rental car.  Idiots.  Dismiss them.  Get irritated at them.  This went on and on, nonstop, for days.  The waitress is beautiful, and the seduction tries again.  I refuse, and then comes, the reason you don’t want her is because you’re gay.  Okay, now they’ve even thrown in the kitchen sink.  Thank God I’ve seen enough fights to recognize it for what it was, and I hung on, giving way to nothing.   It felt like hanging on to the branch over a cliff.  Praying constantly—in the elevator, the car, the bathroom—being gracious to people who continued to make mistakes, fighting all this internally.

I could tell you a hundred stories like that.  From a single year.

You will be tested.  Like Jesus’ desert trial, the enemy comes, probing the perimeter.  He knows your story, knows where the weak spots are.  But this is our training.  This is the spiritual equivalent of, “Take a high guard, like this.  Strike from high.  Like this.  Do it.  Blade straighter.  Leg back.  Bend your knees.  Sword straighter.  Defend yourself.”  This is how we develop a resolute heart.  We make no agreements with whatever the temptation or accusation is.  We repent the moment we do stumble, repent quickly, so that we don’t get hammered.  We pray for strength from the Spirit of God in us.  We directly—and this is the one thing so many men fail to do—we directly resist the enemy, out loud, as Jesus did in the desert.  We quote scripture against him.  We command him to flee.

By the time it’s over, you’ll wish a few angels would drop in and minister to you as well.  I pray they do.