Tag Archives: battle

The Battle Begins, October 16, 2017

Today’s Podcast

Bible Reading Plan – www.Bible-Reading.com; The Story, Chapter 7; You Version Bible app, days 43-49

Today we look at a book of the Old Testament that was required reading for every soldier in the Israeli army before their 1967 war with Egypt. As you read through the book, you’ll understand why. It’s filled with stories of battle. It’s story after story of God intervening for His people, bringing victory to His new nation as they moved into the land He promised Abraham as an inheritance more than 600 years earlier. It’s a book that inspires courage. In fact, three times in the first chapter, We read the words, “Do not fear, for the Lord your God will be with you.” Do you think He means it?

Of course He does. Because God will ask us to do some crazy sounding things that would ordinarily bring fear to the most fearless among us. Just take a look at the first thing God asks Joshua to do in this conquest of the promised land and you’ll understand why He tells Joshua not to be afraid. God has to remind Joshua not to be afraid because He is the master of the events in the upper story and all we can see is the lower story we live in. We can’t always see Him at work so it’s easy for us to be afraid.

Look at the facts Joshua was dealing with as God told him not to fear the people of Jericho.

Forty years had passed but the Canaanites were no smaller than when the Israelites seemed like grasshoppers in their own eyes.
The fortifications around Jericho had been impenetrable against every enemy that tried to oppose it.
Joshua had to take more than a million people across a river without bridges, so there was no hope for surprise.
God told Joshua to circumcise all the males when they crossed the Jordan river just days before they were to attack Jericho.
The strategy God gave them to breach this impenetrable fortress was march around the city in silence once a day for six day, then march around it seven times on the seventh day, blow their trumpets, then take the city.

I’ve been part of planning several combat operations and even more contingency plans in case we were to go to war in various parts of the world. We spend days, weeks, sometimes years refining contingency plans to put the right force in the right place. Making sure the ratios are right. Making sure the supplies are available. Making sure the routes in and out of the objectives can be cleared and kept clear. Putting together everything we could think of to ensure victory before we ever started out on a campaign.

But I never saw a plan like this one…except in the book of Joshua. I think if our planning staff had ever presented something like this to our commander he would have fired us on the spot. Talk about a ludicrous plan. Talk about a way to dishearten your warriors before battle. Talk about a plan sure to fail before it starts. This is it.

Drag a million people across a fast moving river with no bridges and then give all of them minor surgery and tell them you’re going into hand to hand combat. Right! What would you think if you were those soldiers reporting to Joshua? “Don’t be afraid Joshua, I’m with you.”

But God, do you understand how war works? Do you understand that those guys are at least a head taller than all of us and have been warriors from birth? Do you understand that those walls are so thick that people build houses inside them? Do you understand you’re asking us to do the impossible?

“Joshua, don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”

When Joshua looked at what God asked him to do from his lower story point of view, it’s hard not to fear. The plan God laid out looked impossible, foolhardy. So God needed to remind Joshua it’s not us, but Him. Joshua had to look back through the last forty years and remember God was bigger than all the problems they had faced during their desert journey. Joshua, his soldiers, the rest of the Israelites, the people of Jericho before they perished, all the other nations around them, there was no question who won that battle. It wasn’t Israel’s soldiers. It wasn’t Joshua and his brilliant military tactics. It was all God.

So what has God asked you to do that seems ridiculous? What has He put in your mind that if you took the first step just makes you sweat bullets because you are so afraid of the outcome? What plan do you think He has for your life that seems so outrageous that others will look at you and think you’ve lost your mind because it is surely impossible to accomplish and the risks are just too great to even think about stepping out on that journey?

God told us in His word more than one hundred times, “Don’t be afraid.” He told Joshua, “Don’t be afraid. For I, the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Can you trust God to fulfill His promises in your life the way He did for Joshua and Moses and Jacob and Abraham? Each of those heroes we’ve watched in God’s Story have made the same mistakes you and I have (or worse). Yet God used them in tremendous ways, why? Because they trusted God had an upper story that was far superior to their knowledge in their lower story. They trusted God knew a better future than they could see in their short-sighted present.

That’s all God asks of us. Look up and recognize God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways higher than ours. His upper story reaches far beyond what we can see in our lower story and He always works for good for those who love Him and work according to His purposes. When God asks us to do something others might think crazy. Something that even brings a bit of fear to our hearts. Remember God’s admonition, “Don’t be afraid. For I will be with you wherever you go.”

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more about The Story and our part in it. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Don’t get lost in despair! (John 14:1-4), March 26, 2014

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
Have you ever been lost in despair? We probably have all had those moments at one time or another. I found myself in one of those spots many years ago and it took God to pull me out.
Scripture
1. John 14:1-4
2. Jesus: Don’t get lost in despair; believe in God, and keep on believing in Me. My Father’s home is designed to accommodate all of you. If there were not room for everyone, I would have told you that. I am going to make arrangements for your arrival. I will be there to greet you personally and welcome you home, where we will be together. You know where I am going and how to get there.
Devotional
1. I’ve told the story before, and you can read the long version in my book “The Dream” which you can find on Amazon if you want to read it.
2. Desert Storm August 1990, Saddam Hussein crossed into Kuwait
  1. Medical planner for XVIII Airborne Corps
  2. Spent a couple of weeks planning the defense of Saudi Arabian – Kuwaiti border
  3. Started planning the offensive campaign in September
3. 24th Infantry Division wanted to move across the desert to the Euphrates River with blitzkrieg speed.
  1. Crush anything in their path and move on
  2. Planned to move 635 miles as fast as possible – 5 to 10 days
  3. Intelligence said Iraq would use chemical weapons since they had used them on their own people, the Kurds, in the NW to quell their revolt
  4. With chemical rounds available, estimated 3,000 casualties per day
4. Army had never moved that fast against that formidable a force according to our intelligence
  1. Soviet weapons systems
  2. Chemical munitions
  3. Dug in positions
  4. Distances would stretch across 600 miles of desert, too far for helicopters to fly without refueling
5. Medical support for that kind of warfare seemed impossible
  1. My responsibility to write the plan to save those 3,000 lives per day
  2. Casualty meant died or wounded, most would be wounded and need medical support
  3. How do you put the right medical support within reach of the soldiers on the front line when it takes five days to set up a hospital in the field?
  4. Platinum 10 minutes; Golden hour; Surgery in two hours
  5. Moving 600 miles in five days,
  6. no organic vehicles to carry all the equipment required to set up the hospitals, they are stationary once established
  7. Shared vehicles moved ammunition, water, food
6. I couldn’t figure it out
  1. No precedence in history
  2. No current doctrine to support that kind of move without a lot more assets than were available
  3. If the estimates were right, thousands would die
  4. Despair
7. October 12, 1990
  1. Awoke from a dream
  2. Maps of the battlefield showing all the medical unit movements
  3. Knew how to support the movement of the corps through their rapid movement
  4. Medical units did treat thousands of casualties, but not American
  5. Wounded Iraqi soldiers abandoned by their units as they retreated under the pressure of the Allied attack
  6. Desert Storm medical support changed Army doctrine in many areas, but especially in the medical support of active combat
8. Dream came from God, convinced of it
  1. Don’t get lost in despair, believe in God and keep on believing in Jesus. He comes through at just the right time…always.
  2. You can read the whole story in my book, “The Dream” available on Amazon.
  3. God truly is an amazing God.
If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”

Stay on the winning side (Luke 14:31-33) December 4, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – 1 John 4-5

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 14:31-33
Jesus: Or imagine a king gearing up to go to war. Wouldn’t he begin by sitting down with his advisors to determine whether his 10,000 troops could defeat the opponent’s 20,000 troops? If not, he’ll send a peace delegation quickly and negotiate a peace treaty. In the same way, if you want to be My disciple, it will cost you everything. Don’t underestimate that cost!

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

I spent almost my whole career in the Army studying, thinking about, and planning for combat. That’s what the Army does. It’s purpose is to fight and win America’s wars. It doesn’t start them. It doesn’t want them. No soldier that I know enjoys going into combat. But when the country calls on its soldiers to fight for the freedoms we hold dear, they go. And my job as a medical planner was to figure out how to put the right medical support on the battlefield and at every step between the battle and a soldier’s home to make sure he or she got the best care possible.

Consequently, I know about planning to go to war. I worked hand in hand with the warfighters and understood their tactics intimately because I had to know how their tactics influenced the potential number of casualties both we and our enemies would experience. You see, Americans are one of few countries that extend mercy to our enemies once defeated. We tend to our enemies wounded in the same way we tend to our own wounded. It’s what the Geneva Conventions after the World Wars said we should do, but few countries carry out those concepts as well as the United States.

So my job took into account what the warfighters thought would happen in each phase of each battle and throughout the campaigns they planned both for our side and the enemies. It sounds like a daunting task and in some respects I guess it might be. But there are ways to determine what our capabilities really are and what the enemy’s capabilities are. Then you run all that information through different analyses tools and figure out if you can win and at what cost.

The good news for those who have never served, but who have loved ones or friends in the military, I never met a commander that wasn’t averse to losing soldiers in battle. No one I ever met wanted to see soldiers hurt or killed even though we all knew the possibility and sometimes the probability of casualties happening. But our mission, given to us by Congress and the President, was always to fight and win the war. And sometimes that meant we knew it might cost lives or severe injuries to do battle with the enemy. Our opponents often don’t cherish human life the way Americans do and so will fight very different kinds of warfare than us. We have to be prepared for those battles.

ISIS is a good example of the difference. While we can put a smart bomb through a window as Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom demonstrated, we sometimes have civilians caught in the fray because ISIS and terrorist groups like them will surround themselves with civilians to keep us from attacking. We never do. We keep our bases separate from the civilian populace partly for that reason. We never want to be accused of using civilians as shields.

But we take all those tactics of our enemies into account, too. We want to know the cost, both in dollars, in potential injuries, and in potential lives, enemy soldiers, friendly soldiers, and civilians before the first bullet ever leaves the barrel of a rifle. So people like me would spend days and weeks and months locked in vaults planning for all kinds of contingencies just in case something were to happen in some part of the world. The plans were never executed the way we wrote them, but they were always a good starting point rather than starting with a blank sheet of paper when the chips were down.

All that work in the Army reminds me every day of the war we fight in the spiritual world. There is a cost to serving in God’s Army. There will be battles fought when the odds seem insurmountable and losses will be heavy. Sometimes it may even appear as if we’ve lost the battle. But remember that wars are not about one battle. They are campaigns in which a series of battles lead to an ultimate conclusion with victory by one side.

I hope you are on the winning side. In the end there will only be one victor and God’s word has already announced who that will be. There is really no sense in wasting time fighting against Him. He’s already won. Future history is already recorded if that makes any sense. Every promise God makes happens and He promised victory for those that follow Him.

So what are you waiting for? Go tell someone about the wonder of God’s love. Yes it will cost a lot, everything you have and everything you will ever have. But is it worth the cost? You bet it is. Stay on the winning side. It’s worth it.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

A battle is brewing (Amos 5:1-17), June 29, 2015

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Scriptures

Today’s Bible reading plans include:

Ready – Amos 5:1–17
Set – Amos 5; Titus 1
Go! – Amos 4–6; Psalms 86; Titus 1

Amos 5:1-17
¹ Hear this message I sing about you;
it is my dirge for you, people of Israel:
² The virgin Israel has fallen,
fallen never to rise again;
Forsaken in her land, forgotten where she lies.
No one is there to help her rise again.
³ So says the Eternal Lord:
Eternal One: The city that sent out a thousand soldiers
will see only a hundred of them survive;
And the town that sent out a hundred
will see only ten remain for the house of Israel.
⁴ So says the Eternal to Israel:
Eternal One: Turn back to Me and you will live. There is still time.
⁵ But don’t hang your hopes on Bethel,
Or travel to Gilgal or Beersheba or any other sanctuary expecting help,
because Gilgal will surely be sent into exile,
And the shrine at Bethel will come to nothing.
⁶ Turn back to the Eternal One, and you will live.
If you don’t, He will flame up like fire against the house of Joseph,
Burn it to the ground, and no one in Bethel will be able to put it out.
⁷ Listen, you who distort justice and make it taste bitter
and trample righteousness to the ground.
⁸ The One who set the Pleiades and Orion in the heavens,
who turns night’s shadow into morning and darkens the day with night,
Who calls forth the waters of the sea to pour down rain and flood the earth—
the Eternal One is His name,
⁹ Who destroys the mighty in a flash,
and crashes against the fortress with the force of a tidal wave.
¹⁰ Those of you who hold power now hate the one who judges in the courts at the gate
and detest anybody who speaks the truth.
¹¹ So because you have climbed to success on the backs of the poor
and your wealth comes from taxes you impose on their harvests,
You may well build mansions of expensively-cut stones,
but you’ll never occupy them.
You may plant beautiful vineyards,
but you’ll never enjoy their delicious wine.
¹² For I know the depth of evil that you’ve done,
and I see the gravity of your sins:
You persecute those who do the right thing, you take bribes,
and you push the poor to one side in the courts at the city gates instead of helping them.
¹³ So the wise may decide to keep quiet just then,
because truly, it is an evil time.
¹⁴ Search for good and not for evil
so that you may live;
That way the Eternal God, the Commander of heavenly armies, will be at your side,
as you yourselves have even said.
¹⁵ Hate what is evil, and love all that is good;
apply His laws justly in the courts at the city gates,
And it may be that the Eternal God, the Commander of heavenly armies,
will have mercy on those descendants of Joseph who survived.
¹⁶ So says the Eternal God, Commander of heavenly armies, the Lord of all:
Eternal One: Get ready to hear wailing from every street,
people crying out in pain and sorrow along every highway.
The farmers will be pulled away from their fields to mourn,
and those who are trained to grieve will wail with them.
¹⁷ In every vineyard, there will be mourning
because I will pass through the middle of you.
Says the Eternal One.

Today’s Devotional

From today’s background scripture God might say:

Israel didn’t listen to My prophets when I warned them against the evil they were doing. They turned away from My law. They didn’t treat each other justly. The leaders took advantage of the people taxing them into poverty and making themselves rich on the backs of the people they were to care for.

I sent My prophets to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. They continued to do as they pleased and they paid a heavy price for their disobedience. Israel was crushed under the might of Assyria and Babylonia and Persia and Greece and Rome. For centuries, Israel could not hold its own leadership, but lived under the occupation of another country whose leaders did not believe in Me. The Israelites were forced out of their homes and lived in exile as I allowed them to suffer because they abandoned Me.

The United States’ early documents talked about Me. Most of the founding fathers of the country talked of My providence in bringing the people of this country together to form a new nation with the hope of freedom from the tyranny of evil men. Churches grew up in every city and men and women prayed. The first book printed by Congress was the Bible to be used as a reader in schools.

In just two centuries, you have fallen just as Israel fell. Your prosperity caused you to look to other gods and forget Me. I have sent prophets to you, but your churches are empty except for those who tell you what you want to hear. Those who agree with your perverted sense of justice and twist My words to please you.

So I will come soon and bring justice for the righteous. I will again bring peace and hope to My world. But this time, as prophecies have foretold, the new heaven and new earth will come from the purging of all evil. I will come again and the great battle will punish the evil one and all who follow him forever. My people will be brought to live with Me and will feast with Me through eternity.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.