Beyond Basic Training

Beyond Basic Training

9/6/14

When people begin to understand the basics of God they set themselves on a course of learning that can prove to be extraordinary.  There are many sides and aspects that many believe about God but some of these traits are very wrong and are usually thrown into the faces of those who do believe in God and everything that He represents.  The origins of this unbelief is that many of us have not grown beyond the basic training classes that we all accepted shortly after our conversion to Christianity, and through this lack of knowledge about God and His ways our credibility and even existence has been called into question. Until we restore our pathway to the understanding of God this trend and pattern shall continue and even if we do cross the lines of basic training then an escalation of that battle should be expected.

Back in 1988 I joined the United States Air Force and was sent to Lackland AFB, Texas for my basic training course.  It was six weeks of my life that I shall never forget as long as God continues to allow me to breathe.  Up until those few weeks I really thought that I had everything under control where it concerned my life and even though I was not a teenager any longer helped me to establish that belief (lie) within my heart.  I knew that my life would change in many ways during this time period but I had no idea that it would change me from the inside outward.  It was not an easy six weeks but they were filled with strenuous exercise and mind training that totally changed my way of thinking forever.

Those weeks taught me to observe in an unusual way and it was drilled into my head that this process of observation might prove to be my rescue one day.  At the time I had not a clue about why someone would say this to me but it would not take me too long to understand the essentials as to why it was important for me to keep my eyes and ears open, especially in my immediate locale. Personal security in uniform is a must and should not be let down even for a second for any reason.  There have been thousands of documented testimonies of instances where service personnel have been maimed or have lost their lives due to a momentary lapse in procedures and thinking.

While I was in the USAF I also had no clue that this portion of the military would prepare me for another duty I would have many decades down the road.  While my new course of training now would be of a different nature the patterns and the issues are almost identical to that of military service.  In a time where wars and their popularity are basically non-existent we have trended to believe that if we do not subscribe to their philosophies that somehow they will just bypass our society and float away like they had never existed.  The Church has fell into this category as well and in both cases we are now reaping the benefits of sitting around trying to be passive about our surroundings.

While the top brass of the military would love to see their new recruits that have just completed basic training not to be involved in any combat situations for a couple of years, we all know that this is not always possible.  However, that same top brass do expect the recent graduates to learn about their positions and their surroundings enough to warrant their survival in case of an attack.  The enemy watches every move we make and it is our responsibility to return the favor.  As a basic recruit with limited knowledge of military defense they may believe that they have all become Audie Murphy and that they could take on an entire enemy division alone, we know that this is not the case but in order for them to have a fighting chance against an enemy soldier, they must gain further knowledge about combat and how to survive during tough and tense times.

The Church has somehow dropped all of our learning when it comes to the times immediately after our basic training.  The Christian basic training is the time period right after we have accepted Jesus into our heart and have finished a book or two of the Bible, we know just enough information to make us “dangerous” in the eyes of the spiritual world.  The Church and her brilliant belief in how things should be, has allowed the world to incorporate itself within our hearts enough that the functionality and direction of the mission of Christ has basically been halted.  We have not opened our spiritual eyes and ears enough to know what God is saying to us through His word and how important it is that we tell others about the condition of their lives.

A good example of this is found in a book that I am currently reading entitled “The Utes: A Forgotten People” by Wilson Rockwell.  This book is compilation of many aspects of the Utes and their lives and how they lived, adapted and even changed to the physical and social changes that they encountered.  One particular portion of the book dealt with their concepts of God and what He stood for through general messages and stories in the Bible and it was written in this manner:

“The religious ideas of the Utes were not highly developed.  Around the lodge fire they learned from their parents and grandparents that there was a supreme being, who was a good, personal God.  Subordinate to him were other gods, including a God of War, a God of Peace, a God of Floods, a God of Thunder and Lightning, and a God of Blood who heals the sick.  The Utes were sincere believers in immortality.  These beliefs, while very real to the Utes, were never expressed in ceremonies or prayers.  The Ute traditional story of the creation of the world and of the flood was apparently the result of Jesuit teaching which was passed on to them by their Indian neighbors in New Mexico, who came in frequent contact with the Spanish priests.  The untrained minds of the Utes were clouded by superstitions, and their primitive religious life centered primarily around the medicine men.”

While the Christian missionaries understood that the cultures of these peoples were heavily engrained into their lives, it seems like the way that God was introduced to them was on a very basic level and did not go any further than that.  The home field advantage was truly tested in a manner that would seem threatening to the spiritual aspects of their state of living.  Why wasn’t this portion of their lives challenged or at least taught to them by the Jesuit missionaries or any other missionary or passerby for that matter?  In this case it may seem a tad trivial but it is a basic principle that the Church has actually retained and exploited throughout her existence.

It seems that the Jesuit priests did not teach the Indians too much about the dynamics of God and the detailed meaning of why He created the earth and at some point in human history had to wipe man basically from the earth because of his ways and attitudes towards life.  Why didn’t they teach this truth, did they not know why God had to do this or were they too afraid to present a controversial position to an established doctrine?  Either way both practices are still in play today and are being used in the same manner to limit the Kingdom of God’s advancement while strengthening the stranglehold of Satan’s kingdom around the lives of billions.

While presenting another way of life, method or code of conduct to another culture it is common practice to incorporate a familiar cultural setting in order to get the people to relate to what you are saying or explaining to them.  There is nothing wrong with this type of presentation unless you stop at the end of the beginning, or the basics if one wishes to put it in those words.  This stopping point is a popular thing to do when it comes to witnessing and spreading the gospel of Christ to the dying world.  This type of activity is very dangerous because it exposes both the person being witnessed to and the person doing the witnessing to a plethora of attacks that they have no clue of how to defend against all due to the fact that the details of such witnessing are not known.

When placed into this type of setting it is easy for us to understand why things become mixed up in our finite minds.  When Mr. Rockwell stated that the Utes allowed their superstitions to continue at the level that they had been, this tells us that nothing really changed within their hearts since the power of God and the authority that He has was not correctly delivered in the manner that it should have been.  It also is easily understood how the Utes could have intertwined God and their superstitious beliefs together and carried on like nothing ever occurred.  And in truth this mingling of spiritual kingdoms probably infiltrated enough that new divisions and separations occurred within the Ute Nation, it is happening today and therefore would be feasible and easily accepted as like manner for today.

This lack of training within the Church explains why many people have lost faith in God and in the Church due to the lack of faith and belief that the Church leaders and its believers practice.  The lack of understanding of God’s Word and the authority to deliver it to a dying world is one of the primary reasons that we commonly hear the phrase “don’t judge me” today or they will try and justify their stance concerning God by superficial scripture passages they do not fully understand.  With the mixed signals that the Church is portraying combined with the actions of her followers it is easy for the world to come up with such a phrase that basically shuts down all opportunities for witnessing.  Even if one understands that it is their responsibility that their lives are in a shambled state, they still do not wish to hear about the detailed truth as to why this is occurring.  In order to be fair, we Christians have also used these superficial explanations of scriptural passages during arguments in order to defend our positions as well instead of diving into the meat of the Word of God.

This places our beliefs of God into the same basic concepts of God that were presented to the Indians a couple of centuries ago. Have we ignored the deeper truths of God’s Word in order to pacify the standoff between the kingdoms or have we just not been adequately taught the real reasons as to why God wrote and gave His Word to us?  It is plain to see that the ignorance of understanding of His Word is directly affecting our lives each day.  We can see this on a personal level as well as on the societal level and it does not look like we are in any hurry to change things either.  It is scary to me is that those of us who have a deeper understanding of why God allowed things to occur in the biblical times sit back and watch our time on earth pass by and do nothing about our inferiority in the Word of God and through this evidence of non-understanding we will allow a dying world who is already angry continue their pursuit of an eternal death and lash out against those who have the capability to share the truth with them.

Our meager attempts to pacify the worldly kingdom by telling of a watered down gospel with very limited truth or knowledge is an abomination to God and to our existence as a created race.  In our current situation the only path that we can take, unless we wake up and realize the truth about our condition, is one of complete spiritual death.  Not only for the ones in this world who do not know about God and His love for us but also for us who have deliberately sat back waiting on God to return without working as we should be.

The Ute’s center for their beliefs was around the medicine man.  Everything from marriages to sickness was handled by this person and it is clear of his importance within their lives.  We as a cultural society have done the exact same thing as the Native Americans pursued with the medicine man.  Our focus has become primarily on ourselves for guidance and it is evident that we have failed to deliver the truth about God and why He has written His words for our lives.  What phase can we next be prepared for if we do not change our ways?  Total and complete lack of the concepts, laws and lifestyle of God is what we will see in the near future.  We are currently witnessing the beginnings of this philosophy now, so what makes anyone think that we will not abandon our current means and ways of thinking; even though we readily admit that our societies are far worse off today than even a decade ago.

The Jesuits talked about some of the messages that were presented in the Bible but they had no meat behind their words.  The Middle Ages Church used the Word of God as a weapon against those who wanted to think a little differently from what was being demanded from them.  The modern Church has sat back on its seats and have refused to allow God’s truth be shown into the dark.  And we called ourselves enlightened or advanced in our ways of thinking?  It is clear that when we do not understand God’s Word we shall fail miserably as a Church and as a society.  We have the capability and the tools necessary to win the entire world for God and see that no person walking on this earth loses their life for eternity, yet our own limitations to the source of this true life are so limited that we cannot even get out of our pews both spiritually and physically.

So what more can we expect from a desperate and dying world?  Of course they are going to take it out on us along with those who do not understand also.  It is a normal progressive action when one does not properly know the truth about things.  By our own admission we have become vulnerable to many heinous attacks in the world and to be honest it is by our own fault that we do not know how to defend ourselves properly that we are suffering these consequences.  Am I saying that if we lived differently and understood God’s Word more that our problems and attacks would go away?  No way!! In fact they would be more vicious in nature but at least we would understand the true meaning as to why they were occurring.

I guess the question that remains is this: are we going to continue the course of the Jesuits and stay with our limited knowledge and witnessing skills as they did or are we going to dig into the Word of God, shed our own selfish ways and do our best to listen to His voice when He tries to teach us a bit about why He has done the things that we read about?  This is a very important question that we need to ask ourselves because it actually defines our faith in God and the importance of how much we actually believe in God Himself.  If the Word is not taught completely and correctly through the authority of God Himself and with kindness, we can kiss the world goodbye because they shall not listen to our whimsical attitudes.

Whether the world’s population admits it or not each one of us are looking for answers that we can believe in and understand the meaning behind those answers.  Unless we absorb ourselves into the Word of God and to drink up His words and then effectively use them to push back the kingdom of our enemy the world shall continue its laughter at our existence.  God loves each and every one of us and He shall never force Himself on anyone.  It is our responsibility to share the light into the darkness and to pursue the knowledge of God as much as possible and in turn when we accomplish this we are using the basic training that we have learned and using it in the manner to which it was meant.

It is through the basic knowledge and training that we swear our hearts and minds to God but it is the knowledge of what we have learned from the source of our training that actually brings life into the world.  The only way that we can turn this world around and to change the course that we are currently following is to forget ourselves and our selfish wants and rants, and turn back to God and seek Him to be number one in our lives again.  In short, the reasons that God allowed so many horrific things to happen to people is because of their own actions, beliefs and wants and since the Bible talks about people’s lives and you and I are people as well, that means that we are in the same boat as they were, which means we have the same choices that they did as well.  Live beyond our biblical basic training knowledge and God guarantees a visible change in everyone’s lives.

Through this studying the Word of God actually is the funding that God needs in order for Him to reach the world.  Yes, physical tithes are important but the funding of His message to a dying world does not come from money it comes from the actions of His people.  Think about this as you read His words.  In my line of work it is required that I have continuing education classes, programs and seminars because if I do not keep up with the advancements of my specific field how can I provide effective results and potential treatments for patients who place their lives into my care?  Why would our spiritual lives be any different?

We must find it necessary to spend as much time as possible in continuing our education about our spiritual warfare situation and the only way that we can complete this training is by burying our hearts and spirits into the Word of God.  Not to boast about how much we know or to increase our knowledge so we can be a better debater when the time comes, but to be able to understand what people are going through and to show them that God loves them and that there is a true way out of the mess that they are going through.  It is through the basic training of Christianity that we learn the foundations of God but it is through this continuing education process that we actually learn how to live and to thrive against our enemy.  We also know and understand who our enemy is and what his mission targets are, it will also allow us to push back his kingdom so that the light from God will infiltrate those who are in need of help.

The only way that we can honestly and thoroughly complete this mission is if we understand God’s Kingdom and how we fit into it and how we advance it as God would.  We have fallen away from this truth and have tried to adopt a more humanistic strategy of witnessing, and we are seeing the faulty results of our efforts.  To be honest, some of us do not even recognize our enemy any longer and there are those that are so mesmerized by false teachings that they have even begun to attack the Church herself.

We have no choice but to turn our hearts back to God and to allow Him to clean our hearts once again and to restore the true spiritual communication lines.  If we do not the prophecies of the Bible will come to a head very soon for the patterns of this world are constantly changing in a systematic and permanent state and only God can reverse things.  The Church should understand what is ongoing but she is remaining silent according to God’s standards.  Let us bring up the horns and blow into the direction of our enemy and to set notice to him that we are taking control back from him.  Repent and allow God to restore our lives once again or God shall have to give us a reminder of exactly who is in control of all things.

DLB