You are either IN the military or . . .
you are OUT.

No middle ground exists.
Even in the military reserve,
you are still under orders,
subject to authority and
combat ready at any moment.

In the military,
your life is owned and . . .
you are trained toward
one purpose: battle.

Paul Called Timothy to be a Soldier.

From his second imprisonment,
a prison without freedom,
Paul wrote to his son in the Lord
and trained him for a life of discipline
like a soldier . . . .

Reading: 2 Tim. 2:4 NAS   
No soldier in active service             
entangles himself   
  in the affairs of everyday life,  
so that he may please
           the one who enlisted him as a soldier.

An important phrase: "active service."
Spiritual warfare is compared to being
in active service, on current duty,
fully involved on military assignment.
Today.

Such an on-duty believer lives as
restricted a life as does a soldier at war.

Not enmeshed in politics,
not a part of emotional rallies,
not interested in petty opinions,
not swayed by lesser occupations.

The spiritual soldier as trained by Paul
was no self-important spectator
puffed up with endless talk.
He was to be IN the battle, in the race and
squarely in the ring of front line action. 

The true realities and the relevant issues
do not exist within the
world's ideas or information.

The Spiritual Warrior says:

"I am not involved in any human conflicts.
they have no reality.

I am not committed to any human goals.
They have no reality.

I am not bound to any human institutions.
They have no reality.

I am not enmeshed in any human relationships. They have no reality. 

Only God's will,
God's purpose and
God's thoughts
have supreme reality for my life." 

Things, people and situations come
with great tentacles of complication,
enormous weights of false burdens,
all to take the soldier out of commission
so he/she is set aside and bound by
the paralysis of distraction.

Paul was bound by no one,
committed but never owned. 

The training is intense and restrictive.
The chastisement is severe.
The preparation is costly and
many fall away, not fit for war,
by not tolerating the preparation. 

A disciple is one disciplined.
Trained for a purpose,
schooled in the meaning of the purpose
so that he is committed to
the cost of the purpose. 

Unentangled with the world.
Serving one Master.

This strange war of the heavens
is an unrelenting temptation to
fall into distraction.

The warrior's eye is not on the fight.
His mind is not on the enemy.
His focus is not on his own supreme self.

The spiritual soldier is fixed
with wild and exuberant joy on the
face and wishes of
His Triumphant Captain.

"to satisfy and please the one                
who enlisted him . . . "

The New Testament fighter leaves
his own life, his comfort and preferences,
and lives for the pleasure of his Captain,
at His disposal for wherever he is sent,
whatever orders are issued.

His eye is toward Him. His ear hears One.
This voluntary warrior has no rights,
no freedom, no personal life.

The disciple of Jesus Christ
is a soldier at war,
a runner in the race with his destiny,
a farmer of patient sowing. 

. . . let us strip off and throw aside      
every encumbrance (unnecessary weight)
and that sin which so readily
(deftly and cleverly)
clings to and entangles us,
and let us run with patient endurance
and steady and active persistence
the appointed course of the race
that is set before us.

Looking away (from all that will distract)
to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source
of our faith (giving the first incentive
for our belief and is also its Finisher
(bringing it to maturity and perfection).
Hebrew 12:1,2 Amplified Bible

Copyright © 2003 Martha Kilpatrick