Shortly after my eldest son went off to boot camp to become a Marine, he began to send me fairly desperate letters. He even reached out to the heavyweights, asking me to please get Pastor David Wilkerson and others to pray for him.
It was easy for me to empathize with his desperation once I went down to North Carolina and got a tour of what these young men and women had to experience. Our country’s military has procedures designed to make young men and women into soldiers. These tests and challenges are so severe that they are almost impossible to endure. These young people go in, believing they have the world by the tail, but not long into the process, they realize that their perspective is not true at all.
They often don’t realize at first that all this hardship is necessary in order to prepare them to be soldiers. They are being trained to be obedient and to take orders; they are building stamina that will enable them to stand against insurmountable odds. They are being taught about unity and perseverance; fear is being driven out of their hearts.
God desires the same end result for us as his church. It requires us, however, to undergo intense training. We would all like to come into the kingdom of God, to hear from the Lord, to get filled with the Holy Spirit and then to move forward unhindered as we wield the sword of the Spirit. Those kinds of easy accomplishments, though, will never prepare us for true spiritual battle.
Psalm 105:19 says, “…the word of the Lord tested him.” Another meaning for the word “tested” is “to be fitted for the battle.” When we find ourselves on a long journey or in an intense struggle, it will be easy for us to lose heart along the way.
That is why we must remember that the Lord is fitting us for the battle ahead. Just as men and women are trained for battle once they join the military, there is a process that the Lord must take his people through in order to prepare them for the spiritual war that they either knowingly or unknowingly find themselves in. With this in mind, we gain a better perspective on the trials we may be going through. They are for our benefit.
Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001. In May of 2020 he transitioned into a continuing role as General Overseer of Times Square Church, Inc.