The enemy from within.

Mark and Steve were best friends despite being as opposite as two people could be. Mark was funny, outgoing, tall and athletic, but had a temper that was slow to boil yet when it reached it's point it would erupt wildly. Mark was / is the most competitive person that I've ever met my entire life. Steve, on the other hand, was none of these. He was laid back, (okay he was lazy) and he was fat not overweight. I know that's not very politically correct, but hey I'm fat and I know fat – Steve was fat. Sorry if that offends you, maybe it's because your fat too, I don't know, (just kidding) but anyway let's get back to Steve. He was short and fat, (almost as wide as he was tall) and he was never competitive about anything. He never really said anything funny that I can recall, he never did anything athletic that strikes my memory, as a matter of fact he never even suggested going out and doing anything, but was always willing to tag along with us. So opposites Mark and Steve truly were despite the fact they were almost inseparable friends. In the fall of 1981 Mark and myself put together a basketball team and we elected Steve to be our coach / water boy since the league required each team to have a designated coach. Not that any of us ever paid attention to anything Steve said, but on paper he was our coach. I liked and respected Steve for this reason – he was willing to hang out with guys that were totally different than he was. He would go where we went, he'd try and do the things we did, which were all the very things he would never do on his own. To me that showed courage, and I liked Steve's courage.

Then the night came where we were short a player as the time to start the game approached. Dale had a drinking problem, and sometimes it caused him not to show up at places where he was supposed to be. We knew this all too well, so we appointed Steve the responsibility of insuring Dale would make it to the games as sober as possible. Well, he let us down - actually Dale let us down, but we excused him, and held Steve responsible for the problem. Mark told (his best friend) Steve that he would have to play the game. Steve said; NO WAY! Mark told him, he most certainly would because all of this was his fault. Again Steve; said NO! Myself and another player cornered Steve and said; look you won't have to run up and down the court, just hang out at the defensive end and try to keep the other team from getting too many free layups to the basket. Steve agreed to this, and so did Mark. Game starts and Steve does exactly as we knew he would. He took a position underneath our opponents basket and never moved.

Steve smoked two packs a day, so any amount of exercise would have nearly killed him, so he made sure there was never any chance of that happening. It was four on five basketball and Steve resembled a traffic cop at a parade doing nothing. The opposing players would dribble right by him and lay the ball up and Steve would barely move a muscle. Useless! To be honest I knew this would be the case and accepted it, yet it was still better that forfeiting the game I thought. The wider the point margin grew the more frustrated Mark became and then it happened. As we were running down court on offense the refs blew their whistles. We turned to see what the call was, and saw Steve laying on the floor with blood spewing out of his nose. I immediately looked to see which player on the opposing team I was going to give a butt-kicking to for doing this, and quickly realized the only person on the same side of the court as Steve was Mark. Sure enough, Mark had blown a gasket and punched Steve in the face, breaking his nose in the process.

The referees weren't sure what to do since the fight involved two players from the same team. They really couldn't call a foul, so they simply charged us with a time out, and boy did we ever need one. We helped Steve to his feet and cleaned the blood from the court. We chewed Mark out for his actions - yet he wasn't the least bit sorry at that point. Steve, understandably refused to play anymore, so the game was over. It reverted back to a forfeit and was entered into the record books as a score of 1 - 0, which looked a lot better than the blow out showing on the scoreboard. What a night! What a team!

It took a long time for Steve and Mark to reconcile, but they finally did, and things went back to normal. I would venture to say that none of us have ever forgotten the night we forfeited a basketball game because Mark punched Steve in the nose. I haven't seen either one in years, but I suspect they are still best friends. As I look back now, that was indeed the worst basketball team I ever played on.

The other morning I was re-reading the plight of the Israelites as they left Egypt and headed for Canaan-land. I was reminded how often God's “chosen people” would complain about their circumstances. Over and over - every step of the way they cried and complained like a bunch of snotty-nose babies. Over drinking water, food, the heat, the distance, the enemy behind them, and the enemies ahead. Complaint after complaint rolled from their hearts to their tongues and all of these reached the ear of God, just like ours do. Moses did everything he could to appease them. He pleaded with God over and over on their behalf, yet it was never enough. As soon as he turned his back and headed up to the mountainside they began to murmur, complain, and created their own God's to worship. At times Moses would sit for days listening to their complaints about God and each other while trying to be judge and jury in this unending civil litigation process. Finally his father-in-law, Jethro had to tell Moses what he needed to hear, and he was smart enough to heed his advice and appointed one judge per 1,160 people. Finally Moses got a little help with the kids.


It comes as no surprise when out of this group of whiny-butts twelve scouts were sent into the promise land to see what the challenge would be, and ten of them came back with a message of hopelessness. The enemy was too great, the challenge too big, they would all be killed. God must be out of his mind if he thinks we can take over this land. The people once again complained about a God that was out to destroy them, one that should have left them alone in Egypt where at least they were safe and alive - and with this God had had enough. He had provided their every need not just for the past year, but all the way back to his covenant with Abraham and now they were accusing him of being their enemy. God declared to Moses he would wipe the earth of this whole rotten bunch, yet once again Moses called on His promise of faithfulness, and love for these people to calm the moment. God conceded and instructed Moses to turn them around and head back into the desert until everyone twenty years old and older had died out. Finally the people knew they had gone too far and decided to apologize to God and then head on into Canaan without another complaint. Moses nor the Ark budged, so the people went ahead on their own and were chased from the promised land as soon as they crossed over and then the forty years of wandering began.

As my wife, Dale and I talked about these scriptures we applied the lesson it brings to this past year (which was our first year of marriage). We saw how we had struggled far too often because of our unfulfilled expectations of each other, and all the baggage we carried into this new relationship. We indeed complained way too much. She had come out of a thirteen year relationship with a person that wanted nothing more than to be completely dominant and controlling. I came out of relationships of my past where I believed I had never done enough good things for those in my lives. So what happened was, I began by rectifying my shortcomings of the past by making Dale the priority of my life, right after trying to please God. Everything I did was with her best interest in mind, intending to make her life better than ever. I tried to make up for how she was treated in the past (Which never should have been my role.) What Dale felt was; here's this new person trying to control me just like the last one did, and she wasn't going to stand for it. Thus, I would do some very thoughtful things for her, and she would complain and reject it – over and over - and this would not only frustrate her, but hurt my feelings terribly in the process. Finally we began to see what was going on and we were able to communicate what each one was feeling. She now sees my intentions for what they truly are, and I see her independence in the light I need to see it. The first year wasn't a smooth ride, but it was a great learning lesson about relationships. A lesson we both needed to learn in order to move forward together. We may still falter at times, but there's no question about it, we are in unity with each other.


What I find as a common thread in all three of these examples is this, despite all the external enemies, all the challenges, all the circumstances that just seem to fall on the rotten side of luck – the true enemy actually comes from within us. Whether it be on the basketball court, spread across the sands of a barren wilderness, or on stage as we perform our latest version of This is my marriage. When the dust settles we find that the enemy doesn't attack us from the outside, he overtakes us from the inside. Our minds, our hearts, our tongues, our jealousies, our anger, our insecurities, our unresolved past, and especially our unforgiveness - all weapons which we supply to our enemy. Thus it is with our churches as well as with society as a whole. Gossiping, back-biting, complaining, in-fighting over who's in control etc., etc. Churches split up or dissolve everyday at the hands of the enemy which resides inside the church members, and not because they are attacked from the outside. The world doesn't tear down churches, it's the members themselves that bring about destruction.


Here is one of the biggest weapons of all our enemy uses against us, distraction. Distraction from serving others, distraction from delivering the good news, distraction from developing a true relationship with our Savior, distraction from our true purpose, distraction from acting / being in unity with each other. Nothing in my mind will cause more people to spend eternity in Hell than will distractions which ultimately causes indifference.


I suspect we fight against our self, as well as with God much more often than any of us even realize. No matter what God did for the Israelites yesterday, or two hours earlier, they were found griping about what he had not done lately. They were constantly distracted from their praise of God for all He had done in their past, by all the things the enemy insisted He should be supplying this day. (The same holds true even today.) They had the same mindset of entitlement that so many have today. Sadly, we are much more like the folks who were never allowed into the promised land than we'll ever care to admit. No matter what God did yesterday or yester-year we still have such little faith that He'll be there for us in our present situation.


There's evidence of this staring me in the face everyday as I get email after email sharing the view that we are a doomed country today, because of this person, or that situation. That if this bill, or that law is allowed in it will be the peril of our lifestyle as we know it. Recently the message was; if we don't have a National Day of Prayer we might as well pack our bags and move to Iran. The God that has faithfully protected us yesterday apparently is no match for what the enemy is throwing our way today according to the reports I get everyday. Apparently, we must now fight God's battles for Him, we must become the consciousness of the world. We must do more to protect our way of life. Geez....get a grip folks! This country as we know it today doesn't need a day of prayer it needs a life-time of prayer!


When the church as a whole seems to be distracted from our faith by the act of fault-finding and complaining over every little thing coming down the pike I can't help but wonder when is God going to say; enough is enough. Just as He did when he reached his boiling point with the complaining and disrespect he was shown by the Hebrew people, I suspect one day He'll said again, “now they'll know what it's like to have me as their enemy.” I believe America is fastly becoming a God-less nation as many predict, but it's not because of a particular political party, president, or law, or growth in numbers of Atheist. It's because we, (those that call ourselves believers) are losing the battle against the enemy from within. We have more complaints and worries in our lives than we do Faith.


You see, the enemy that destroyed Mark's reputation was never Steve, it came from his own problems. The opposing teams didn't beat our basketball team week after week, the defeats came from within our own ranks. God didn't send me here to be Dale's enemy I was to be her helper, but because of our past issues we didn't understand our roles at first. The Israelite's true enemy was never the Egyptians, the Canaanites, or the gigantic Amorites or any other 'ites as far as that goes - it was themselves. It was what was in their hearts. The enemy in the world isn't rotting away at the fiber of our churches, it's coming from within it's own body. Our enemy in today's America isn't the folks in charge of our government, or those that believe in things we oppose, or even those that don't believe in God at all - its' what's in our hearts, or maybe more rightly, what's not in our heart. We're never going to make a true difference in the world by spending every waking moment railing against our government, but with that same amount of time we can feed the hunger, we can teach the illiterate, we can love the seemingly unlovable, we can house the homeless. In other words I believe we should fight the battles we can win, control the things we can control, and let God do the rest. His word says, He gives us the power to overcome the enemy that resides within us. Yet do we rely on His word, or are we too distracted with what's going on outside that we never suit up for the battle on the inside?

Many of us proclaim to be Christians but lack total faith that God really is in control. We lack a willingness to live a lifestyle that demonstrates we are not of this world, yet merely in it. We fail to show an understanding that the battle is actually being waged against principalities of evil, and not evil people. Most often we seem to have a lack of understanding that the battle in the world around us is God's and not our own - that we are merely called to deliver the Good News about a resurrected physician that has the power to heal the sick and dying.

Unity in spirit with God / with Christ, places us on a much different pathway than rest the world travels. It puts aside the issues of this world and it takes up the cause of mercy, charity, peacemaking, etc., etc. We no longer should get frustrated by our best friend's lack of effort, or the lop-sided score of a basketball game. We no longer try and serve in a role other than the one in which He has chosen for us. We no longer see those that simply want to love us as being somehow our enemy. We no longer should complain about the lacking we have in our lives, yet celebrate with praise all He has given us. Unity with His spirit does indeed take a much different course than what many of us have been traveling of late. As His people, His Church, we need to turn our vision from the superficial problems of this world, and take up the battle to deliver the Gospel once again. Are you fighting that fight today, the one Paul says is the good fight worth fighting to the very end, because if you're not, the enemy from within is most certainly winning, whether you know it or not. Doug