The Name of The Game Is Slayer...

"WYATT! DON'T SASSINATE ME!!"

"Okay."

(gun fire)

"WYATT!! I SAID DON'T SASSINATE ME!!!"

(no answer)

"You have ta let me sassinate YOU!"

"You have to earn your assassinations."

As I sit here, computer in lap...working on a completely different blog...I hear this exchange between a very frustrated Nacho and his older brother, and I look up from my blogging and watch them.  I see the almost desperate face of my 6 year old as he whole-heartedly petitions his brother not to "sassinate" him and I see the utter calm and resignation on the face of his older brother, who is unmoved by his pleas and unceremoniously "sassinates" him.

"WYATT!!! LET ME SASSINATE YOU!!" Nacho demands desperately, but unfortunately his brother is not feeling benevolent.

"No."

(Whining) "THAT'S WHY I WANT TO JUST PLAY BY MYSELF!"

As a mom, it's tempting to intervene on behalf of my young one...To step in and force his brother to have mercy because he IS just a little and is severely outmatched.

You see they are in involved in a game called "Slayer". It's a match of wits and skill where they search various maps for each other and whoever has the most kills in a set time period, wins the match.

I watched and almost intervened when I heard Him say...

"No."

So, now, I'm faced with the ever echoing, "Why?" and I begin to process what is unfolding in front of me.

Here is what I see:

1) A little boy who knowingly entered a match of skill and wit, full of confidence, with a much older, more skillful opponent.

2) A little boy who underestimated his own skill and the skill level of his opponent.

3) A little boy who becomes seriously frustrated and demands his opponent to allow him to "sassinate" him.

4) A little boy who decides that playing the game alone would be more beneficial to his mission...
one that began as to assonate the opponent and has now changed to roam a map alone and randomly blowing up unimportant props so he can feel like has has accomplished something...then after a bit he challenges his brother again....with the same end result.

5) An opponent unwilling to compromise or surrender...because he knows he is the inevitable victor.

6) A desire to intervene.


And here is what He showed me:

1) How many times do we knowingly enter into a battle with our enemy, so full of confidence in our ability to take him down?

2) How many times have we and do we sorely underestimate his skill level versus our own?

3) How many times do we become frustrated and really wish he would just slow down so we could "sassinate" him and feel better about where we are spiritually?

4)  How many times do we decide that, when we discover that we aren't as skilled as we thought we were, it's not worth it and we would be better off playing the game alone and change our mission to exclude real warfare and include a lot of explosions of irrelevant 'purposes'?

5)  Our "opponent" is uncompromising and unwilling to surrender and just allow us to slaughter him...because he knows we lack the knowledge of who we are.

6)  Intervention only enables the victim mindset.

So, I dutifully switch blogs.

1) I can't even count how many times I, myself, have done this. You know what I'm talking about...that moment when you have been playing against lesser demons and you have emerged victorious from your battles, confident of your ability to conquer the next level up. We KNOWINGLY enter in to battles with enemies who outmatch us.

Now hear me. Death is defeated and Jesus is King. Hell knows it, but sometimes, we don't.  We catch glimpses of our identity and instead of pressing in to discover more and more, to "level up" if you will, we take our finite knowledge of the kingdom and run with it....straight into a match with a prince that exceeds our "skill level"....and because we are ten-foot-tall-and-bulletproof...

We march right into...

2) Underestimation. Just because Jesus defeated Hell, doesn't mean that Hell responds to us in the same ways. Even the disciples got their hind-parts soundly kicked and Jesus had to handle it. It wasn't that they didn't have the power, it was that they didn't have the know how...or the skill for that particular demon. They had done this before and they just assumed that this time would be just like the rest...but it wasn't. And....

3) OH. How. Frustrated. We. Get.  We start throwing out desperate threats...hoping that our words would somehow convince the enemy that we are really more educated and strategic and that it would allow us to gain the upper hand. Our less than convincing 'rebukes' and extravagant quotations of the right "scriptures" sound much like my 6 year olds attempt to use the proper terminology to the enemy.   Comical and childish.

See, we have this misunderstanding that the kingdom of darkness doesn't know the Word as well as we do...But they have known it since the dawn of creation....For Jesus, Himself, is the Word. When we have a simple face knowledge of Jesus and His scriptures, but no heart knowledge...No revelation...We sound as helpless as we really are...like little girls and boys trying to use big scary words that we have no idea what they mean or how to properly pronounce them. Then we become confused and begin to question the power of the name of Jesus and our own ability to conquer darkness when we demand that we be allowed to "sassinate" and the enemy ignores us, openly defies us, or soundly whips us.

I saw another mental exchange happen with my two sons and this one really just...wow.

Wyatt had assisted in the set up of a particular map and knew it like the back of his hand. He knew where the hiding places were and where the transports were.  There were times when he strategized and allowed himself to be killed because he knew that where he would respawn would be beneficial to victory in that match.

Yep. Our enemy does that too. Lures us into a place of his design and deceives us into thinking that this 'kill' is the important one, and we go in guns blazing and eradicate the enemy only to have him respawn in an area that we never expected and he takes us out.

Wow.  Looking back,  I've been a victim of that on more than one occasion as I'm sure many of you have, as well.

4)  So we get mad. Indignant. Discouraged. We get tired of being beaten at every turn and instead of learning from our mistakes or spending time learning how to win, we decide that it's easier and better for us to roam the map alone with no challenger, rationalizing that this will help us gain skill in our military tactics. And we run around making a lot of noise about what God has done and how He has used us in the past, but we avoid what He is doing NOW.  We fire upon things that have no relation to our purpose or destiny.  Imaginary enemies....things that have no threat or power...and we feel better about our artillery until, without ever having entered His presence to be trained, we enter into the same match we were defeated in earlier...with no more power...no more knowledge...and no more chance of beating him than Nacho has of beating his brother.

God, help us.

5) And our enemy meets us again. And we demand his surrender. And he laughs at us.  Why would he surrender a battle he has already gained the upper hand in?  We have no idea of the power we hold.  ..of the kingdom authority we actually possess...and he knows it.  There is a devastating self-inflicted plague of kingdom illiteracy among the children of God and as long as the enemy can keep us in the repetitive circle of defeat and self-service, then he will never have to surrender the dominion that Jesus DIED to return to us....

Because that's what the battle is for.

Dominion.

6)  Then we ultimately get pretty ticked about why God does not intervene on our behalf...why He seems to watch from a distance while we suffer defeat after defeat in the same arena.

You know? My first child crawled early. He talked early. He walked early.  When my second child was 9 months old and he wasn't even crawling, I was concerned.  The pediatrician assured me that he was neurologically normal and that he was just different that his brother...and sure enough, he started crawling in a few more weeks and then began walking shortly after.

Speech was another thing altogether. Again the pediatrician assured me that he would speak soon enough and that I would miss the silent days.  At 2 years old, when he only had about 10 words, though, his pediatrician began to dig a little deeper into his development.  At one appointment, he observed as Wyatt grunted and pointed to his cup and I responded by giving it to him.  Then when he grunted and I couldn't make out what he wanted, Tucker (his elder by 19 months) interpreted for him.

The pediatrician smiled and told me in no uncertain terms that I was the reason that Wyatt didn't speak. I was mortified and offended...but he was right. My son had no reason to learn to speak. I knew what he needed and gave it to him...and I was crippling his ability to communicate.

As I thought back on Wyatt's slower development, I realized that I snuggled him a lot (NOT a bad thing!) and the child was hardly ever on the floor.  He was either in a swing or in my arms the majority of his infant life.  He couldn't learn to crawl because I never gave him the opportunity to.

In the same way, if our Papa constantly intervenes in things for us, we will never learn to stand on our own. Never learn to operate in the power of the Spirit if we never have defeats that send us back into His presence to learn WHY we were defeated and HOW we can overcome. In His great mercy, He allows us the necessary defeats so that we may grow in our knowledge of Him and in who we are in Him...if we will resist the urge to play the game alone when we get discouraged.


This has me thinking and I wonder...

What would  happen if we actually knew the Word?

What would happen if we actually knew the enemy's map as well he does?

What if we actually understood warfare and strategy?

What if we stopped expecting God to save us from our own laziness?

What if we actually knew what the weapons of our warfare REALLY were?

What if we actually spent time training with Him?

The name of the game is Slayer.

I think I'm ready to BE that...for real. Instead of an easy target. Actually...I'm pretty ok with being a Juggernaut.  The one who is almost impossible to kill because of their camouflage, invisibility, and shields...the one the opponents are intimidated of and watch their backs because of.

Yeah. I like that.

"I do, too."  And He smiles.