A Lesson from a Ridiculous Fencing Class

A Jesus-following leader named Paul used the image of a 1st century Roman soldier to describe how a follower of Jesus should be prepared for spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is about dealing with attacks that come not from human efforts, but from the enemy of God. In the Bible used by Jesus-followers, in a section known as the letter to the Ephesians, Paul identifies several elements of "the full armor of God," using the language of a soldier's garb of that time...things such as the helmet, the breastplate, the shield, etc. (Ephesians 6:10-18) Virtually all of the items are for the purpose of defense or protection. The one exception is the sword, identified as the Spirit of God via God's Word and prayer. (verses 17 & 18)

Most every week I spend time with a group of Jesus-following men who gather to pray together, to dig into the Word together, to encourage each other, to address the primary mission of making disciples for Jesus, and to stand with each other in spiritual warfare. A couple of those men wisely noted that most Christians spend a lot of time on the defensive side of spiritual warfare. We just hunker down and hope to avoid damage and to protect each other. They note that, with the sword being part of that armament, we're expected to be on the attack, joining with Jesus in the battle for the human heart! So we've been examining what that would look like in our context.

In college my wife (girlfriend, then) and I took a class in fencing. It was more entertaining than formidable, but I did learn a couple of things about swordplay. First, to be on the attack, mistakes are necessary. In swordplay, the vast majority of your swings, thrusts, strikes, etc. will fail. You'll miss, they'll be blocked, ducked, parried, whatever. Yet you keep doing it for the one movement that will hit and score. Sometimes Christians are so afraid of failing, so afraid of risking, and so afraid of image, that we try one thing to further the Kingdom in some way, and, if it fails, we quit. Nothing is a failure if we learn from it. And we're not going to learn unless we're willing to fail. The second follows on this: don't quit. In fencing, you have to thrust and strike, over and over. If you just defend, you score no points, and the match is lost. Too often we let ourselves get discouraged and give up on that to which we were called. The greatest testimonies in scripture and life are of those who moved resolutely forward when all the evidence pointed to failure, when no encouragement was forthcoming, when derision was all around. In my experience, for Jesus-followers to move from being nominal to being impacting, and for churches to move for inward maintenance to outward growth in leading people in new life with Jesus, is not about flashy technique, charismatic leadership alone, or even about the illusive "momentum." Ninety percent of it is dogged persistence in that which pleases the heart of God and that which draws people to God.

Those are my initial thoughts on the "sword" in the "full armor of God." Your thoughts? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.