Weapons of This World

Jesus turns away the sword; the Rock of Ages has no need of the weapons of this world. David refused Saul's armor; the weapons of this world made the mighty warrior clumsy. And it's not just these two. All throughout God's story, He demonstrates again and again that His battles are not won with the weapons of this world.

It's how Gideon brings down Midian with a bunch of clay pots. It's how Samson kills the Philistines with a jawbone and flaming foxes. It's why the walls of Jericho fall to a shout. Over and over and over again, God shows that it's not the world's weapons that win battles.

But here we are, and most of us buy into the idea that we have to fight the way the world fights if we ever hope to win them over. It's why we have churches with business plans, Christians who won't stop until they reach the corner office, the faithful falling into traps of cynicism, sarcasm, and passive-aggressiveness. 

It's...ugly. It's unbecoming of a people of God. And it makes us just as clumsy as a young David wielding a far-too-big sword. We just can't fight this way.

We'll never win.

We'll never win if we go running head-first into hard walls, thinking that by sheer power and strategy, they will fall. We'll never win if we hold both hands on the sword without a light to see by. We'll never win if we buy into the myth that the dullest sword is a danger to the sharpest faith.

The world will never see who God is if His people profess to be nothing more than the best swordsmen. Who is this God of yours that He makes you no more than any other soldier of this world?

Who is this God of yours who speaks love but who makes you speak only the best cynicism? Who is this God of yours who proclaims so-called truth, though your passive-aggressiveness makes the world have to dig for it? Who is this God of yours who has given you the victory, though you continue to fight so hard? Who is this God of yours who has made you somebody, but you refuse to believe it until your name is on the desk? Who is this God of yours....

At every turn, when we try to fight with the weapons of this world, we show our God to be false. Plain and simple. We show that our God is nothing more than we are able to make of Him by the world's standards, by the world's definitions. And the world isn't stupid - they see this more clearly than we do. 

But show up with clay pots. Show up with jawbones. Show up with trumpets, with buckets of water, with vegetables. Show up with a Cross bearing down on your shoulders. Show up with the weapons that are not of this world and all of a sudden, this world sees what God is really made of. Not because we showed up to fight.

But because He did.