Maybe Warfare Isn't the Absence of God's Blessing

God can use your oppressors or your enemies to make headway for you.

I know. It sounds backwards.

When I was reading about Hezekiah and the Assyrians, something stood out to me. The king of Assyria had conquered nations, destroyed cities, and caused unimaginable suffering. Eventually, he became so prideful that he blasphemed God.

And God's response basically made me stop.

Oh, you thought you did all of this on your own?

God tells him in Isaiah 37:26 that He had ordained these things long ago.

Imagine that.

Imagine having an enemy who has consistently conquered, destroyed, and caused suffering, only to find out that even with all of that power, they were never outside of God's sovereignty.

Now, I want to be careful here.

Bad things are still bad things.

Evil truly exists.

Suffering still hurts.

Oppression is still oppression.

God being sovereign over something does not suddenly make what happened good.

I think sometimes when we talk about God working everything together, we can accidentally skip over the reality that some things are genuinely horrible. Even watching shows like SEAL Team or Chicago P.D., you can see the bigger picture of a mission while still seeing the suffering happening inside of it.

Someone can win and still be traumatized.

Someone can survive and still grieve.

A mission can be accomplished and still cost somebody something.

Seeing the bigger picture doesn't take away the suffering.

And when you're actually in the midst of it, it can be extremely difficult to see beyond what is happening right in front of you.

That's why Hezekiah's response is so profound to me.

This man was a king.

An army was coming against his people. He was hearing about everything the Assyrians had already done to other nations. This wasn't an imaginary threat. He had every reason to be afraid.

And Hezekiah was distressed.

But then he did something that I truly don't believe can be done through human strength alone.

He turned to God.

He took the threatening letter, went into the house of the Lord, spread it before God, and prayed.

Think about the strength that takes.

Not the strength to pretend you're not afraid.

Not the strength to say, “Everything is fine.”

Not the strength to convince yourself that what is happening doesn't hurt.

A completely different kind of strength.

The strength to trust God from the position of fear.

And maybe that's where the headway was being made.

What If God Uses Opposition to Give You Freedom?

I kept thinking:

What if God uses the people who oppose you to give you freedom?

Not necessarily freedom in this world.

Not necessarily freedom from every enemy.

But freedom to choose truth.

Freedom to stand on God's Word.

Freedom to pray when you're afraid.

Freedom to laugh in the face of danger.

Freedom from believing that everything depends on you.

Freedom from constantly trying to save yourself.

Ion know how to explain it, but maybe sometimes we are asking God to remove something when God is using that very thing to move us somewhere.

Hezekiah could have responded differently.

He could have surrendered.

He could have relied completely on his own strategy.

He could have decided that because Assyria had defeated everybody else, there was no reason to believe Judah would be any different.

Instead, the threat gave Hezekiah an opportunity to move in a completely different direction:

toward God.

And that's when something clicked for me.

Maybe warfare isn't always a sign that something has gone wrong.

Maybe trials and tribulations aren't evidence that God has left.

Maybe not being healed immediately doesn't mean God isn't present.

Maybe the presence of warfare doesn't mean the absence of God's blessing.

Because sometimes the blessing isn't that there is no battle.

Sometimes the blessing is discovering who you become and Who you run to in the middle of one.

Maybe Warfare Isn't Good—But God Is

For a second, my thought was:

Maybe war is good.

But no.

I don't think that's it.

War isn't good.

Oppression isn't good.

Suffering isn't good.

Evil doesn't suddenly become righteous because God can use it.

God is good.

And because God is good, He can take something that was intended to destroy, imprison, terrify, or discourage you and somehow make headway through it.

That's probably why Harriet Tubman came to my mind.

She experienced horrific oppression. There is absolutely nothing good about slavery. Nothing.

But oppression did not get the final word over her life.

She escaped.

And then she went back.

Again.

And again.

And helped other people experience freedom too.

The very system designed to convince people that they were powerless encountered someone who refused to let oppression determine what she could become or what God could do through her.

And maybe that's what I'm trying to say.

There are people who spend all of their strength trying to defeat what opposes them.

And then there are people who allow God to use the existence of opposition to transform how they fight.

That doesn't mean you become passive.

Hezekiah still had responsibilities as king.

Harriet Tubman still moved.

Faith doesn't mean sitting down and doing nothing.

It means understanding where your strength is coming from while you move.

Making Headway

I keep coming back to that word.

Headway.

Because making headway doesn't mean there isn't resistance.

Actually, you only need to make headway because there is resistance.

A ship makes headway against the current.

And maybe that's what God does with us.

Sometimes God makes headway for us by removing what stands in our way.

But sometimes God makes headway in us by showing us that what stands in our way cannot stop where He is taking us.

Maybe yesterday, fear made you run.

Today, fear makes you pray.

Headway.

Maybe yesterday, suffering made you question whether God was there.

Today, suffering makes you reach for Him.

Headway.

Maybe yesterday, you thought strength meant figuring everything out yourself.

Today, strength looks like taking the letter, laying it before God, and saying:

Here. I cannot do this without You.

Headway.

And I think that's what makes Hezekiah's story so powerful to me.

The army was still outside.

The threat was still real.

The suffering of the nations around him had actually happened.

Hezekiah didn't know how everything was going to end when he walked into that temple.

But he walked into the temple anyway.

That's a different kind of strength.

That's supernatural strength.

Because maybe the greatest evidence that God is making headway in your life isn't that you no longer experience warfare.

Maybe it's that warfare no longer determines where you run.

Bad things are still bad. Evil is still evil. Suffering still hurts. But none of those things are powerful enough to stop God from making headway.

Love Always,

Cass Jea'nne