Endure hardship

You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. - 2 Timothy 2v3-4

Passage after passage in this little epistle reminds us that following Christ is not going to be easy. Paul knew what this was very likely his last correspondence with Timothy. He knew the end was coming. In many ways this was his farewell address. It was way past time to being painting a rosy picture of what was to come.

You must endure hardship as a good soldier. Though raised in a military family I never had the privilege of serving my country in a military capacity. I planned on it and trained for it, but God had other ideas. There were many times, even in training, where being a soldier was tough. I can only imagine the difficulties of being a real soldier in a time of warfare. Every moment your life is threatened. Your enemy is all around you. There really is no comfort zone. I think ‘endure’ is the perfect word here. It’s just something you have to do.

A true soldier must also be focused on his task. The greatest danger lies in getting distracted. If you can’t stay focused chances are you will not survive.

It is this picture that Paul paints of the Christian life. We are not on a great spiritual holiday with room service and a swimming pool. We are not going to get breakfast in bed. In fact, we are blessed when we get breakfast at all. The enemy is always out firing just above our heads. We have to watch our every move. The slightest distraction could spell destruction for us or our fellow soldiers.

The church in many places has been out of the battle so long that we have forgotten that we are in a real war. It is not just the little skirmishes that most of us face, but it is a real, full scale war. We are not soldiers safely at base camp or on R&R, but we are at the battle front. The war, in many ways appears to be intensifying. The enemy is advancing. He is carrying the battle to base camp.

Have we grown so lazy and out of shape that we are not fit for the battle now? Did we forget while we were on R&R that the battle still had to be fought? Have we become so soft that we don’t even know what hardness is?

These are questions that we all need to face up to. What kind of soldiers are we? Are we willing to put up with the hardship?