Train to Live on Mission – Week 40
Battle Drill #40:
Trust your Training!
Proverbs 30:5-6 (NAS95)
Today, we are going to walk through the four action steps of a soldier’s training routine to learn Battle Drill #40 – “Trust your Training!” You are going to find that this battle drill serves as an effective bookend with Battle Drill #3 – “Trust the Commander!” from Proverbs 3:5-6. These two are intimately yoked as we learn to trust God and the Bible from which He calls us to train ourselves in godliness. This is a critical reality for the church, just as it was for me as a soldier in the military to learn to trust my training.
For example, the United States Army’s Airborne School is unnecessarily long – it is three weeks long but could be consolidated to one week! Honestly, all you must do to earn your wings is successfully complete five jumps, including one night jump. Of course, it is highly encouraged that you can walk off the jump zone each time and stand at graduation. The first week is called ground week and you spend most of the day, every day, learning how to do a parachute landing fall (PLF) in sawdust pits. It is mind-numbing training and besides getting sawdust in every possible place in your body, you are constantly being evaluated for mental and physical toughness before you are allowed to move to the second week, which is called tower week. Tower week is doing countless simulated jumps from a ten-meter tower simulating the procedures you must follow upon leaving the airplane, preparing to hit the ground, and executing a proper PLF at the approximate force of an actual jump. The intensity of training increases in every way for one reason – to prepare you for jump week when you must trust your training because nothing can quite prepare you to jump out of a perfectly good airplane! The third week is jump week and you quickly learn that nothing can quite prepare you to step out of that airplane at 1,250 feet, flying at 130 mph when you step out of it, but by this point you have done more PLFs, simulated leaving an aircraft more times, and followed all airborne procedures so many times that you reflexively, instinctively, and habitually do what you are trained to do when it matters – as you plumet to earth at 13 mph, hitting at the equivalent force of jumping off a nine-to-twelve foot wall. The first two weeks of Airborne school are to ensure the person is mentally, emotionally, and physically capable of trusting their training when it matters.
This is what this battle drill sermons series is all about. We must learn to trust our training so that we execute the Field Manual according to the Commander’s intent when it matters the most. Regardless of how much you know about God or say you love Him, if you don’t learn to trust your training, you will not live on mission. You will be hijacked by your circumstances, driven by your feelings, or engulfed by your nervous system.
To illustrate the importance of learning and applying today’s battle drill in real life, Katie Kinnaird is going to share with us a recent testimony.
Action Step #1) Know the Field Manual.
Action Step #2) Train together as one unit.
Just as an army must trust its field manuals so that every soldier is being trained according to the same doctrine and strategies, the church must be unified in the Bible as infallible in its authority and inerrant in its source. We must trust God’s authority and that He gave us a trustworthy Bible, our Field Manual. As our battle drill states in Proverbs 30:5, “Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.” Psalm 18:30 complements, “As for God, His way is blameless; the word of the Lord is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.” When we trust God, we will walk in His ways, according to the Scriptures.
Paul taught his protégé in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” The Word of God is sufficient to the task for which we were called, so trust it and don’t adlib, as the second half of our battle drill emphasizes in Proverb 30:6, “Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Don’t hijack the process by trying to fix it yourself. You will only make it worse!
The Commander has given you His battle drills to protect you and provide for you all that you need to fulfill His mission. From Joshua 1:8, the Commander said to one of His first generals, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” Do you believe this?
In the same way that we learn to trust that God has enlisted us to successfully fulfill His mission according to the Scriptures, we must learn to trust that we aren’t alone in the mission. As fellow members of His body, we need one another. This is God’s will for our lives as Paul emphasized through the body imagery of the church in Romans 12:4-5, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
We need one another, more than we know, just as we learned from our previous Battle Drill, “Train with a Battle Buddy!” We need to walk in the way of Jesus Christ with one another and carry one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:1-2). A significant component of the training regimen is training as a fellow member of the body of Christ, and not alone, because if we are to do what Jesus, the head of the church, commands us, and please Him, then we must do it in concert with His will for our lives, collectively as the individual members of the one body of Christ. As Paul said in Ephesians 1:22-23, “And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Ultimately, God is glorified through our unity as Jesus prayed in John 17:22-23:
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
This is how we are to train together! Now, let’s turn to the third action item.
Action Step #3) Seek the Commander’s approval.
For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
This teaching applies to every area of our lives because this battle drill gives you the tools to defeat your self-will (the flesh); it is winning the battle for your loyalty so that you can CM on God’s rescue mission! You will trust in God or in yourself, but don’t be deceived – there can be only one in whom you ultimately trust and that is revealed in the moments where the stakes are the highest. Don’t make assumptions – train this trust into your bones! Now is not a time to swim in da Nile (denial)!
Do you remember the second half of our battle drill that I touched upon earlier? Proverbs 30:6 warns us, “Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” In other words, don’t adlib or else! When you add to or modify His words, you demonstrate your lack of faith in God as infallible and your inherent mistrust in His Word as inerrant. Remember, the higher the stakes, the more we must trust our training; that God is our shield and refuge!
Allow me an anecdotal story from my days as a paratrooper. There is a major mistake paratroopers make when they are about to hit the ground – they reach for the ground with their feet. This is so natural to do that you must train yourself to not do it! Otherwise, you end up with a major injury like a twisted knee, broken leg, smashed ankles, or worse. You must absorb the ground upon impact by keeping your knees and ankles flexed, but it takes an incredible amount of discipline to trust your training, especially in night jumps when you can’t see the quickly approaching ground. It’s this same survival instinct that causes so many broken wrists when people fall. It is natural to reach out to stop yourself from falling, but those who have been trained how to fall know not to – often what you feel is the right thing to do is not!
Allow me to give you a word of grace: If anyone tells you that at any point in your Christian life you won’t struggle with your humanity and the effects of living in this tent (2 Corinthians 5:1-9), then they are placing a burden on you that Christ has not. Holiness is Christ in you, not your ability to perfectly master the flesh. The righteousness you have is imputed upon you through Christ’s victory, not one earned by a life of perfect thought life, perfect emotional stability, and perfect mastery of your body. Training this battle drill is about trusting the Holy Spirit to do in and through you what God promises! The life we live is a life submitted to Jesus Christ, just as Paul commented about himself in Galatians 2:19-21:
For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.
This is our victory – our faith (1 John 5:4)! That leads us into our final action step.
Action Step #4) Live on mission.
On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.