In one of the defining scenes of the Hacksaw Ridge movie, the combat medic Desmond Doss finds himself alone on the battlefield after all the other American forces retreated from the bitterly contested ridge on Okinawa. Feeling lost and overwhelmed by the horror, he cries out to God: “What is it you want of me? I don’t understand. I can’t hear you!” He then hears the cry of a wounded man calling out for help, and realizes that this was the answer – God’s way of directly communicating with him in the midst of the battle. With renewed courage, he gathers himself together and sets off in the direction of the voice of the wounded soldier.
Two months ago, I published a post about the spiritual warfare that has made the year 2020 one of the most difficult in living memory. This situation shows no signs of ending anytime soon, and we should expect it to intensify even more in the future. One of the greatest challenges in war is meaningful and trustworthy communication. They say that knowing is half the battle, but even this principle is difficult to apply in the fog of war due to the continuous and fierce clashes over the reliability of the information. In such times, there are three facts that we should keep in mind.
First, God as our general does not miscommunicate with us, nor does he misread the battlefield in a way that needlessly jeopardizes the future victory or our own lives (unlike countless human generals over the centuries who could not see the whole picture at any given time). However, it is entirely possible that there will be times that God’s voice will be silent or will seem silent, and we will be tempted to believe that we have lost the connection. This understandably can lead to despair or panic in our hearts, and can cause us to take actions that are against our own interests.
In times like these, it is wise to ask ourselves what the last command that we remember hearing was, and to remind ourselves of the overall calling that we know that God has placed on our lives. This stance is what allowed Desmond Doss to regain his footing and keep moving forward in saving the wounded, and it is also what kept David in the battle until it was over: “I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them; neither did I turn back again till they were destroyed” (Psalm 18:37).
Second, we need to remember that not all communication is verbal. Messages can be delivered visually as well – for example, by using a symbolic flag in battle: “Declare among the nations, proclaim, and set up a standard (flag); proclaim – do not conceal it – say, ‘Babylon is taken…” (Jeremiah 50:2). Something within the heart of the warrior is stirred to action with renewed courage simply by seeing the standard of his own side moving along the frontlines. We must follow the movement of the standard of our king expectantly, and move accordingly.
Light is another ancient means of communication during warfare: “Then [Gideon] divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet into every man’s hand, with empty pitchers, and torches inside the pitchers… Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers—they held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing…” (Judges 7:16, 20). This light not only startled the Midianite enemies, but also caused the darkness of night to glow. Interestingly, the breaking of the clay jars was what allowed the light to shine. Our human clay (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) often reaches the breaking point in wartime, but if our lives are in God’s hands then his light will shine through even then.
Third, the enemy will do his best to gain an advantage on the communication front – either by using psychological warfare to demoralize us (2 Chronicles 32), or by feeding us information designed to mislead us. In times like these we must never remove the helmet of salvation that guards our minds from the thoughts placed there by the enemy (Ephesians 6:17). It is the helmet that also identified soldiers in ancient battles, and simply seeing other believers wearing it as a identifying mark of salvation is in itself communication that cannot be valued too highly.
These days can be particularly cruel when God’s voice seems obscured, but even in the fog of war there are messages from his word to which we can cling. During times of absolute silence, we already know so much of what he has told us. And even when we think that we are going crazy, he is capable of reminding us of just the right information at just the right time in order to keep us moving forward to victory.
Photo taken from NDLA site.
