He Will Hold Me Fast - Keith and Kristyn Getty

Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery - Matt Papa

"A Vision for the Lost" - William Booth

I saw a dark and stormy ocean. Over it the black clouds hung heavily; through them every now and then vivid winds moaned, and the waves rose and foamed, towered and broke, only to rise and foam, tower and break again.

In that ocean I thought I say myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating, shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning; and as they cursed and screamed they rose and shrieked again, and them some sank to rise no more.

And I saw out of this dark angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with its summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this great rock I saw a vast platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean. And I saw that a few of those who were already safe on the platform were helping the poor creatures still in the angry waters to reach the place of safety.

On looking more closely I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of the sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of the consequences in their passion to “rescue the perishing.” And I hardly know which gladdened me the most—the sight of the poor drowning people climbing onto the rocks reaching a place of safety, or the devotion and self-sacrifice of those whose whole being was wrapped up in the effort for their deliverance.

As I looked on, I saw that the occupants of that platform were quite a mixed company. That is, they were divided into different “sets” or classes, and they occupied themselves with different pleasures and employments. But only a very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.

But what puzzled me most was the fact that though all of them had been rescued at one time or another from the ocean, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten all about it. Anyway, it seemed the memory of its darkness and danger no longer troubled them at all. And what seemed equally strange and perplexing to me was that these people did not even seem to have a care—that is any agonizing care—about the poor perishing ones who were struggling and drowning right before their very eyes . . . many of whom were their own husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and even their own children.

(William Booth, A Vision for the Lost, as quoted in The Vine Projectby Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, pages 55-56, Matthias Media)

O Church Arise - Getty's

Trusting God

Four Reasons Why We Leave

By: Andrew Knight

I remember the time I first heard about the world’s greatest missionary — how he left his home, his family, and everything familiar to minister among the most unreached peoples. He immersed himself in his new culture and contextualized the gospel in every way, becoming all things to all people. He lived and loved. He prayed and pursued. He ministered everywhere he went. 

And then he was martyred at the hands of the those he came to save.

His death, however, didn’t silence or stop his mission; his death spread his message far and wide. Books were written about him. Testimonies were shared about him. His fame reached people group after people group, nations after nation, continent after continent. 

His mission did not die when he did. It was a fresh beginning, not a final scene. He redeemed and released the largest missionary force the world has ever known. His final words still reverberate in the ears of his followers today, “Go and make disciples.” Jesus Christ was the greatest missionary because he died to save the nations, and to send his messengers all over the world with the gospel. We were his mission. We are his ambassadors. Our God left the earth for now, and until he returns, he has left a legacy of leavers. 

1. We leave because God saves us to send us.

God is not done sending after sending his Son. His plan all along has been to send the saved. His aim is to instill his Son’s faithfulness and passion in human hearts through the Holy Spirit, and to multiply his Son’s missional life countless times over in the body of Christ. Jesus was not kidding when he said, “Follow me.” He was not bluffing when he said, “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). God is serious about sending and firm about our fishing. His will is not a total mystery. Jesus’s last words on earth ring with clarity and power: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you,” (John 20:21). God is making us disciple-makers — all of us.

If sanctification means being conformed into the likeness of Christ, and mission was a crucial aspect of who Christ was and is, then sanctification must relate intimately to mission, to what we hope to accomplish with our lives. You simply cannot be growing, godly, and sanctified unless you are going in some shape, form, or fashion — unless your life is about taking the gospel where it is not believed, whether next door or somewhere in the Middle East. You were made to go, maybe not to the mission field, but certainly somewhere. And more of us probably need to consider whether God might be calling us to go overseas. 

Either way, it’s not if, but where. Every saved person on the planet shares one mission, passed down to us by the greatest Missionary in history. 

2. We leave because the gospel saves the unreached.

The saving power of the gospel has, over time, totally transformed my understanding of our mission. The more I could identify with Paul, as the foremost of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), the more the power of the gospel won me over and changed how I lived. My own salvation, in spite of the hideousness of my sin, gave me new and deeper hope for other entrenched and unreached sinners. There was now no one beyond the hope of heaven. If Jesus had saved even me, he could save anyone. Missionaries have an acute awareness of the unlikeliness of their own salvation. It’s why they have so much hope for the unlikeliest of peoples.

Paul tells us in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Paul defines the gospel as the concentrated, forceful power of God. The parting of the Red Sea and all the plagues of Egypt are but child’s play compared to what God does in making dead people live and helping blind people see. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The same God who created the world from nothing can create faith and love and hope where there is none. Creation was simply an illustration of what God is capable of in the sinful human heart. 

The greatest demonstration of God’s power is the work he does, through the gospel, hundreds of times every day around the world. God’s gospel is his infinite, merciful power to save. That’s what it’s for. That’s what it does. Do you believe he can do that for others? How about for the millions living among the unreached (00.00% Christian)? If we don’t, we should look in the mirror, again. 

3. We leave because the gospel saves us from living for ourselves.

There is clearly nothing wrong with the good news of the gospel, nothing broken in the message. Then what is keeping all the lost people in the world from believing the gospel? What’s wrong? For sure, some are being blinded by Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). But so many have never heard the gospel. How can they believe in a gospel they have never heard (Romans 10:14)? So in one sense, we are what’s wrong. We’re not yet going to take the gospel to them. 

How does that relate to me? I am in need of a monumental shift in my heart so that I “no longer live for [myself]” (2 Corinthians 5:15). Without God’s help, I will only live for me, think for me, and act for me, for my own sake. It’s sickening. But the gospel saves us and makes us sick of our old selves. 

The gospel frees me from self, to God, for others. Sure, I have first world problems with emotional heartache here and there, but I am not going to hell anymore. My greatest problem has been solved. I have no more dilemmas in my eternal destiny. But others live through all the pains and stresses of everyday life with the added horror of an eternal punishment. Hell is their future. Unless the gospel frees us from ourselves, we will not go. But it has, and so we must, and some of us to the ends of the earth. 

4. We leave because so few do.

“Are you offering God a canvas or a coloring book?” 

This analogy has tested the seriousness and respect I have for the Great Commission for years. Either I belong to God, or he belongs to me. I either come to God as a blank canvas with my signature at the bottom saying, “Have your way with me,” or I come with a predetermined plan for what I will do. I just let God pick the colors. We give God an outline, and he better stay within the lines.

We have a world missions crisis:

• Half of the world’s population is considered unreached by the gospel (2% or less evangelical Christian).
• 33% of Europe, 50% of Russia, 80% of China, and 90% of some parts of southeast Asia are unreached, many totally unengaged (with no known gospel workers).
• 2,200 people groups do not have access to a Bible in their own language.

The crisis exists not because our gospel is broken, but because our going is broken. There is not a shortage of the gospel, but a dysfunction in our distribution of it. Jesus makes it clear to us, “The harvest is plentiful” (Matthew 9:37). God will save. He intends to save. He has people in every people group (Revelation 5:9–10; Acts 18:9–10). But he will not save them apart from goers, without a spokesman. He began his saving work in the person of Christ, and he will continue to win people through other people, period.

The harvest is plentiful, but there are so few willing to go. Jesus says, after looking upon the helpless and harassed people desperately in need of hope, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38). The one who calls us to leave, to go into the harvest fields with the gospel, is himself the Lord of the harvest. He goes before us, and does the most important work for us, the heart work. He only calls us to go, and to speak. Your life could be an answer to Jesus’s great prayer. You could be the laborer, the leaver.

I left in July, 2015. I now live and minister in secularized and post-Christian Europe. No one made me leave, but I became a leaver through prayer. Be warned: If you’re not prepared to leave and live overseas, don’t start praying for the nations. If you do, you might find yourself leaving, too, and sooner rather than later. I can tell you we have experienced incredible joy living in the goodness of God’s plan, by his gift of faith and courage. 

God doesn’t call everyone to go overseas, but there are good reasons to leave, and there are unique graces waiting on the paths to the nations.

Upon a life I did not live (Lyrics) - Indelible Grace

A wee little man changed by Jesus

I was reading the story of Zacchaeus this morning in Luke 19. I still remember as a kid singing the song that goes along with this story and the "wee little man was he". If you grew up in the church, you know the song I am talking about. Be careful, if you sing it, it may be in your head all day! But again, that may be a good thing to remind us of this changed life by Jesus coming and showing himself to the weakest and most hated people.

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector. Not just a tax collector like Matthew, yet a CHIEF tax collector and it says he was rich. How did he get his money? My stealing and extorting it from the people he lived around. That was how tax collectors made their money. People hated, REALLY hated tax collectors, even more then people hate paying their taxes in our day.

Yet on this trip, Jesus went to go find a hated man by people, yet loved by Jesus. Jesus did not care what the people said of Him. They said "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner". Why yes He did. We are all sinners, we all need a visit from Jesus to know and be known by God and be raised from the dead. Zacchaeus was looking for Jesus because God had been working in His heart. Zacchaeus met his creator and God that day and He was raised from the dead. How do we see that? We see that he turned from what he once worshipped and followed, Money. His old god was dead to him and Jesus, the true God, knew Him and saved Him. Zacchaeus responded in a way to see his life was changed. He gave away half his goods to the poor (whom he didn't care for before this) and he would restore fourfold to those he had defrauded (which would have been basically everyone). He would have been broke after this, well in the worlds sense. He was among the richest men and women of the world to know and be known by the God of this universe. His home was in heaven and he was a exile in this world (Hebrews 13:14 & 1 Peter 1:1)

Jesus "came to seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10), which Zaccheaus was and which we are. This is an example of the life changing work of God. I am thankful that God came and found me, saved me, raised me from the dead! Let us remember, Jesus came to seek and save the lost. We can't look down on anyone and think they are not able to be saved. No one thought Zacchaeus could be saved. Yet what is impossible with men, is only possible with God!

Lets praise our God for He is worthy! Let us Behold our God and sing to him!

Behold Our God - Lyrics Video [Risen]

Winsome Weirdos - John Piper

According to the apostle Peter’s first letter, labeling Christians as “winsome weirdos” is not only linguistically alliterative; it is also exegetically accurate. The implications for our cultural moment in America are crucial.

I have especially in mind 1 Peter 4:3–4,

The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.

Two statements stand out: “they are surprised,” and “they malign you.” The word here for “surprised” (Greek xenizontai) is translated “strange things” in Acts 17:20 (“You bring some strange things to our ears”). It’s built on the word for strange, foreign, or unfamiliar (xenos). 

Eight verses later, both the verb (xenizesthe) and the adjective (xenou) forms are used to describe the persecution of Christians: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12).

We might paraphrase by saying: “Don’t think it strange (4:12) when they think you are strange (4:4).” 

Sojourners and Exiles

The first sparks of the “fiery trial” are already flying as Peter writes. They include the “maligning” of Christians in verse 4. The word translated “malign” is blasphemeo — from which we get our English word blaspheme. The Greek dictionary (BDAG) defines it as, “slander, revile, defame, speak irreverently/impiously/disrespectfully of or about.”

What, then, is the situation as a whole? 

Peter has already identified the Christians as “elect exiles” (1 Peter 1:1), whom he urges “as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The entire Christian life is “the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17). In other words, we are “strangers (xenoi) and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).

The implication of this “foreign” status of Christians among the cultures of the world is that the new birth (1 Peter 1:3, 23) has given us new desires (1 Peter 1:14; 2:2) that no longer match “what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:3). The result is a disruption of whom we literally “run with” (verse 4). And this disruption causes our associates to be “surprised.” That is, they think it “strange” that we are not running with them into the same “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3).

Weirdos

This reaction to our new strangeness is so strong that they “malign” (blaphemountes) us. This is where I see the idea of “weirdo.” Their response to our “strangeness” is not mild or respectful. It is strong and severe. The word “malign” does not mean they say: “We all have our preferences, and we can live and let live with mutual respect.” No. “Malign,” together with “see as strange,” means they are using strong language to insult the Christians. The label “weirdo” would be among the more mild results of our new way of life.

Other results of Christians becoming culturally alien “weirdos,” who are out of step with “what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:3), include: being “reviled” (1 Peter 3:9, 16), being called “evildoers” (1 Peter 2:12), “suffering” (1 Peter 3:14, 17, 18), and being “beaten” (1 Peter 2:20). 

Weirdness Embraced

What makes this situation remarkable is that the apostle Peter calls us to embrace it, but then to do so many good deeds, that at least some of our detractors are won over, and even glorify God because of our lives. Not because we become less “weird” but because we are more than weird.

First, notice that our “weirdness” is called for by Peter, and embraced by us. He says we are to “live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do” (1 Peter 4:2–3). In other words, we are to choose to march out of step with a culture which is driven by “human passions,” and in step with the “will of God.” Weirdness called for. Chosen. Embraced.

Winsome Weirdness

But, second, notice that, just as prominent in this book, is the call to be so busy with good deeds that those who malign us are “silenced,” “shamed,” and “converted.” 

• “This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” (1 Peter 2:15) 
• “Have a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” (1 Peter 3:16) 
• “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” (1 Peter 2:12) 

Our aim in filling our lives with “good deeds” is that:

• Ignorant and foolish criticism of Christians would be revealed and silenced.
• Slanderous reviling of Christians would be put to shame.
• And, best of all, calling Christians “evildoers” would be converted into calling God glorious.

That is where I get the word “winsome.”

In Step and Out of Step

What is striking and paradoxical in 1 Peter is the mandate that Christians are to be both out of step with their culture, and compelling in the culture. We are to be weird and winsome. 

The key in 1 Peter is that the inevitable moral weirdness that arises from replacing “human passions” with the “will of God” (1 Peter 4:2), and replacing “passions of former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14) with joy in Christ and his ways (1 Peter 1:6, 8; 2:3; 4:13), is matched with a Christian zeal for “good deeds” (1 Peter 2:15, 20; 3:6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17; 4:19). Perhaps Peter’s strongest statement of this zeal is that we are to be “zealous for the good” (1 Peter 3:13).

And it needs to be stressed that “good deeds” are not merely the avoidance of bad behavior. That avoidance is crucial. It is essential throughout 1 Peter. That is why we are maligned as “weirdos.” But “good deeds” are the proactive efforts to “bless” those who revile us (3:9). 

Of course, there are many things Christians regard as good which the culture will call evil. That is what Peter says: “They speak against you as evildoers” (1 Peter 2:12). But right alongside of that recognition, Peter presses us: “that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). These are deeds that, if God wills, even the hostile culture will see as good.

The Relevance for America

What makes this so relevant today is that American culture is increasingly out of step with the way of life which the Bible calls “how you ought to walk and to please God” (1 Thessalonians 4:1). Proposals about how Christians should respond to this situation include (as a recent symposium in Christianity Todayillustrates), the Benedict Option (Rod Dreher), the Wilberforce Option (Peter Wehrner and Michael Gerson) and the Dr. King Option (Gabriel Salguero).

It seems to me that all of these options embody aspects of the response to culture that are needed in our day: ongoing engagement, creating alternative communities, readiness to surrender dominance.

What the apostle Peter contributes to this debate, among other things, is this: Baby Boomers (like me) who grew up with an assumed overlap between Christian morality and cultural expectations, and Millennials, who desperately want to be hip and cool, must both joyfully embrace the calling to be weirdos. It is not our culture. And we are not cool. 

And, with just as much resolve and joy, we must set our faces to be winsome. Not by cowering before the slander, or desperately trying to avoid being maligned, but by getting up every morning dreaming of what new good deeds can be done today. What fresh way can I “bless” my enemies (1 Peter 3:9) or anyone in need? This may be as simple as a genuine conversation with the woman panhandling at the corner of 11th Avenue and 17th Street. Or it may be creating a ministry as huge as World Vision or Samaritan’s Purse or Food for the Hungry.

The apostle Peter is calling for a special breed. Not the kind of conservative who gives all his energy to embracing and defending his weirdo status. And not the kind of liberal who will embrace any compromise necessary to avoid being a weirdo. But rather a breed that is courageous enough to be joyfully weird, and compassionate enough to be “zealous for good deeds.”

Awake and at War - John Piper

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,  who trains my hands for war,  and my fingers for battle.  –Psalm 144:1

Two thousand years ago, “the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel” (1 Samuel 17:45) sent his Son to earth on a new kind of mission among his enemies (Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:3, 16). He would defeat them not by killing, but by dying, and he would gather those who surrender into the very family of his Father. The world had entered a new era. 

Until his crucified, risen, and reigning Son returns to earth in glory, God will no longer go out among the armies of his people with the weapons of this world. That Old Testament period of holy war is over. Now there are no nations, no peoples, no tribes to be defeated, because the crucified Lamb has “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The enemy is not nations, not peoples. The enemy is sin, and Satan, and hearts that hold fast to the insurrection.

Day of Salvation

For now, until he comes again, there is no trumpet summoning God’s people to sword and shield and chariots and horses. Instead, the God of armies has dispatched his ambassadors among every enemy outpost with the message of amnesty, the offer of reconciliation with no recriminations for past disloyalty. “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

For now, in this “favorable time” — in this “day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2) — “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4–5).

For now, until “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8) — until then, the followers of the Lamb are called to imitate their Master, “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure, when slandered, we entreat” (1 Corinthians 4:12–13). 

“The Lord Jesus is no less a warrior today than in the days of old.”

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For now, until the Lord Jesus, with his eyes “a flame of fire,” and with “a robe dipped in blood,” and with “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” — until he comes to “tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God” (Revelation 19:12–15), “we are not waging war according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:3). “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). 

For now, until Christ appears “a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28) — until then, the Lord declares, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting” (John 18:36). 

Once he led his armies in holy war at the head of Israel. At the end of the age, he will take up arms again. But for now, this is the day of salvation. The day of amnesty. The day of reconciliation. The day of triumph through suffering.

Call to War

But we who follow the Lamb are in no less a war than David or Joshua. The Lord Jesus would not even let us follow him until we considered the cost of this war: “What king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?” (Luke 14:31). 

But it is a “good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18). A “good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7). Our enemies in this war are “the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11), the law of sin “waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin” (Romans 7:23), and the devil who was “a murderer from the beginning . . . and the father of lies” (John 8:44). 

It is a fight for faith (2 Timothy 4:7), a fight for righteousness (2 Corinthians 6:7), and a fight for life (1 Timothy 6:12). No one perishes because of this fight, but only in spite of it. It is a fight to save (1 Corinthians 9:22), not destroy. The arch enemy in this fight is a destroyer (1 Corinthians 10:10). Our warfare is a fight for liberation from this enemy.

“As with every war, people must often be opposed for the sake of people. For the enemy has many agents.”

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It is a good warfare, even though, as with every war, people must often be opposed for the sake of people. For the enemy has many agents. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14–15). But our defensive protection against the apostles of darkness is not the armor of steel, but the “armor of light” (Romans 13:12). And our offensive weapon is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” not the sword of the flesh (Ephesians 6:17). 

The words of our warfare may be gentle: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind . . . correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25). Or our words may be severe: “Filled with the Holy Spirit, [Paul] looked intently at [Elymas] and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?’” (Acts 13:9–10).

Promise of Victory

It is a good warfare also because the decisive victory has already been achieved by the Lord of glory. “The Son of God appeared . . . to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Christ took on human nature “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15). 

Satan’s time is short. The dragon’s head is off. And he is flailing in the death throes of defeat. At God’s appointed time, “The devil . . . [will be] thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur . . . and will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10; Matthew 8:29; 25:41).

“Satan’s time is short. The dragon’s head is off. And he is flailing in the death throes of defeat.”

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For the followers of the Lamb, the implications for their warfare are stupendous. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33). Neither “angels nor rulers . . . nor powers . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:38–39). “He who is in [us] is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). We conquer “him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of [our] testimony” (Revelation 12:11).

Let us pray, therefore, that we not be lulled into the sleep of appeasement, as if the Hitler of hell had no intentions of world conquest. We are not ignorant of his designs (2 Corinthians 2:11). And though the warfare of the world is not the war of chariots and horses, the Lord Jesus is no less a warrior today than in the days of old. So let us come as willing soldiers of the Prince of Peace and declare, “He trains my hands for war” (Psalm 18:34).