Warriors Don't Kill Their Wounded
?My dear warriors,
I’ve heard it said many times that the Christian army is the only army in existence that kills its own wounded. While I did not originally intend on releasing this blog today (the one intended for today will be posted later on this week), my heart was too burdened with this subject to wait any longer to release it. Warriors who have a great calling on their lives often seem to get beaten down more than anyone else. My dear wounded warriors: you who press on despite the mocking, derision and beating you take on an almost daily basis, let me take this moment to honor you.
The God-given call on your life is not simply a cloak that you wrap yourself in and see yourself magically step into. When you have a call on your life, you have direct orders from the King Himself about what it is you’re supposed to do, and you see who you are meant to become through His lens. The moment you receive your call, it is both thrilling and terrifying. You can scarcely contain your excitement as you realize “Wow. That is what I’m going to become! I know what I want to do for the rest of my life!!” At the same time, you suddenly feel yourself shrinking under the weight of this new call, and feel yourself becoming infinitely smaller as the mountain you must overcome to get there rises straight out of the earth and into the heavens before you. You suddenly realize you have no idea how you’re going to get there from here. But that’s ok. You’re not meant to do it on your own.
Those who have this tremendous call on their lives already know how difficult it is without anyone else making it more difficult. It is so important to be encouraged in that calling. It is like a tender flower budding forth for the first time: delicate, needing to be tended to, cared for and cultivated so that it can burst forth into full bloom. Of course it is also like the cedar trees, and it needs opposition so that it can grow roots and stand firm. There is a time and place for each.
As warriors, we need to recognize that whether we are on the training ground or the battleground that we must support our fellow warriors. We train and fight together; we strengthen and encourage one another. When one cannot walk on his own, we support him until he can. In our camp, our wishes, desires and dreams should be seen as sacred and should be cared for. As Christians, there is no place for negativity, cynicism, sarcasm, mockery or derision. We do not make fun of each other for our peculiar calling, discourage each other when we stumble, or tear each other down when we fall flat as we press on to our goals. As warriors, we are meant to encourage one another in the Lord. We help each other put on our armor and together we press on towards the upward prize of our call. We are not lone rangers. We are an army of warriors.
Personally, I do not understand the ridicule, mockery and derision in Christian camps. My friends and I have noticed we are the “odd ones out” simply because we have dreams that look impossible to those around us. (To us, those God-sized dreams look perfectly feasible—as long as we are looking to Him).
There is nothing that thrills me more than seeing people consumed with passion for their calling. There is nothing more satisfying than finding your purpose, that which you live for, that which you are called to by God Himself, and pursuing that with all you have and all you are. How anyone could mock that is beyond me. I am a writer. It is my heart and soul to write. My best friend is a musician. The man I love is a warrior. My dear friend back home has a love for elephants. Another dear friend is a brilliant filmmaker with a knack for underwater cinematography. A friend from work wants nothing more than to spend his days tending to his garden. No matter how vastly different or unusual, each persons call was written onto their hearts from the very beginning; and each of us has run head-long into opposition to our call.
I have known since I was small that I was a writer and a storyteller. The interesting thing is that I have been met with equal hostility about my writing from those I love and from those who think little of me/ care nothing about the call on my life. I have been ripped apart, my writing has been crushed with really ugly criticism and I’ve been told I would never make it as a writer. In undergrad, I was told that if I didn’t get my first script written and produced in Hollywood by the time I was 21, I had no future as a writer, so I should give up now and just sit down, get my PhD and teach writing theory instead. This was just months before I turned 21, and it set me on this incredibly hostile timeline that so locked me up that I found I could not write at all. Finally I realized that I was simply coming into agreement with untruths that had been spoken over me. I had bought into lies, and those lies caused me to become anxious and kept me from doing what I loved. Why? Because now my dreams had been put on an unrealistic deadline.
Within the last few years, I’ve learned not to come into agreement with those lies. When we accept lies spoken over ourselves, they effectively become word curses that handcuff us and keep us in bondage. I learned to break those word curses off of myself, and I now recognize lies for what they are when they come at me, and I reject them. I refuse to come into agreement with anything that would bind me up and cause me to live in fear, anxiety or unnecessary frustration. Writing and storytelling are written into my DNA (along with dancing, painting and creating of any kind). To deny my desire to create is to deny who I am, and is the most frustrating thing in the world. We are not meant to deny who we are, or try to shut down what we are called to do. (The result of shutting yourself down is really ugly.)
When I shared this story with my best about a month ago, I did not know that my own realization could have such a profound on someone else. I didn’t realize that my own story could radically affect someone else until she gasped in shock and realized she had bought into the selfsame lies. She is a musician, and a brilliant one at that. As she has pursued her music, she had been pelted with negativity, ugly criticism, and found little support—even at home, where she should have felt safe and been encouraged. After countless grad school rejections, she found herself creatively locked up and unable to create music anymore. Her inability to write music (out of her own anxiety) just caused her to become even more convinced of the lie that she was talentless and not meant to make music. She had bought into the lies that she would never make it, that she wasn't talented enough, that her music was childish, that her music was not worth anything—and as a result, that she was not worth anything. That stuck like a knife in her heart. Together she and I worked those daggers out of her heart and closed the wounds, and now she is pursuing music with a new light, spark and fire in her heart. I could not be more thrilled. In fact, we just filmed her first music video this weekend! (You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/HFqFWnJVFRk )
I’ll give another example. Someone I care deeply about loves to train martial. He is a personal protection specialist, a warrior and lifelong student of the comprehensive warrior way. He has been made fun of for beating the absolute tar of out of a torso target, for training for hours on end and for being passionate about martial sciences. Most people probably do not understand why he is armed at all times, but it is one of the things I absolutely admire about him. I find it incredibly inspiring that he practices who God has called him to be every single day of his life. Being a warrior is written into his DNA. It is part of his persona in Christ. For anyone to mock that simply means they do not yet see him as God sees him.
I have always been a warrior at heart, but because of him I have learned to think from a warrior mindset, and am learning to live as a warrior in each moment of my day. I have changed the way I dress so that I can always be armed. Though he may not recognize this, just the way he sees the world has caused me to become more vigilant at every moment. He has had an incredible impact on my life and I have learned to see the world from a new perspective. Where others do not understand him, I value him tremendously and hold him in high esteem. I am grateful for the influence he has had on my life and I hope he knows that.
It is so important that we speak life to one another and hold each other in esteem, just like that. We ought to embrace other’s seemingly peculiar callings and spur each other on. We are all going to get beat up, wounded and damaged on the battlefield, so we ought to carry a sense of duty about tending to one another’s wounds, rather than throwing salt on the wounds or twisting the knives in a little deeper. We should not be inflicting more pain or doing more damage to one another. The world already does enough of that without us contributing. We are meant to speak to the Christ in each other. We are meant to see each other the way God sees us. If you do not see someone the way God sees them, ask Him for a lens change. Ask Him how He sees that person. I guarantee you He does not view them from a negative perspective, so if you have a negative view of someone, get rid of it. Ask Him, “God, who is it that you say this person is? Give me Your eyes to see this person,” and then only respond to that person from that point of understanding. Do not react to them based on who you perceived them to be before. They are who God says they are—not who the world claims they are.
We don’t often give people the real fighting chance or opportunity they need or are meant to have, simply because we do not see them as God sees them.
Even now I struggle with opposition against my writing; against mockery and derision. People are incredibly condescending when they hear I am a writer and ask me why on earth I would want to ‘waste’ so much time doing something so awful as writing. They do not understand the sheer joy I get out of writing, or that I feel the Lord’s pleasure as I write! I have the courage to keep writing because I feel how pleased the Lord is with me as I write, and I have become prolific and confident in my writing because a few people who love me cheer me on. I am so grateful for my fellow warriors in Christ who support me, who fight for me when I am weak, and fight with me when I am strong.
For those of you who struggle against the tide, day in and day out, who constantly face mockery and derision and who do not yet have fellow warriors to support you, let me encourage you. If no one else will say this to you, let me: you are worthy. Pursue that which God has place on your heart, and do it for Him alone. Even if no one else understands it, press on to your upward call. Even if no one else will support you, know that God is pleased with you for pursuing that which he has programmed into your very DNA before you were even born. God did not make a mistake with you.
David said in Psalm 139:14, ‘You formed my inward parts in my mothers womb and I thank you for it! Your workmanship is pure genius and my soul knows it well’ He did not complain or tell God that He got it wrong, or wish that God had made him any other way. He gave God thanks and praise because he understood that he was fearfully and wonderfully made. He understood that in His genius, God created him exactly as He intended, and that only God had the full insight as to why he was made the way he was. So take heart, my dear warrior. Take delight in the fact that you are weirdly wonderful and God did not make any mistakes when He made you. Take joy in the fact that He has the full insight as to why He made you as He did, and don’t you dare wish you were someone else for one minute. Be at peace with who you are. Pursue that which God has placed on your heart and do it for Him alone. Even if no one else understands it, press on to your upward call.
For absolutely everyone, I task you with this: love, support and encourage others in the Lord. Not just those you already love. Ask God to give you a new perspective, ask Him to fill you with His love for others. Then, love the unlovable ones; love the people you want to hate; love the people you never notice. I try to do the best I can to support those in my life: cheering them on, doing whatever I can to spur them on, to drive their passion forward, to let my heart catch fire with their fire. Whether it is buying something they need, giving money, building a website or resume, filming their music videos, doing their dishes, cleaning their house or running errands for them so they can have some relief from the pressure of their busy lives to pursue their goals, I love to help them see their dreams become reality. Today, see someone else’s dream as a reality. Speak life into someone's dream. Support your fellow warriors in Christ and encourage them in the Lord. Pick up those who are wounded and help them heal and move forward again.
To those of you who have been wounded in the battlefield of life, whose dreams are bleeding out as we speak, forgive. I urge you to forgive. I can almost guarantee you that the other person has already forgotten. For you to cling to bitterness or unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and expecting the other person to die. It only damages you. Learn to forgive; give the hurtful things that other people have said and done to God and you will find a freedom that will release you back into pursuing your dreams. You will get back your dashed dreams . You will be able to partner with the Lord in your dreams again because you will have been set free from a burden you were never meant to carry.
As always, live in the battleground, dear warriors,
Yours,
Warrior Beloved
?Michèle Aimée, 2015
Read the original blog post here: https://micheleaimee.weebly.com/blog-alive-to-god/warriors-dont-kill-their-wounded