When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, when you feel like Morton’s salt is being poured into your wounded soul, you don’t want a thin, pale, emotional Jesus who relates only to lambs and birds and babies.
You want a warrior Jesus.
You want a battlefield Jesus. You want His rigorous and robust gospel to command your sensibilities to stand at attention.
…think about the resurrection. A man, stone-cold dead–rose up from His slab and walked out of His grave….That reality has power; it’s truth that grips you. Some people believe Jesus came to do sweet, pleasant things, like turning bad people into nice people. Not so. As someone once said, our Lord and Savior came to turn dead people into living ones—and there’s nothing sentimental about that.
[During] these warfare days….I need a battlefield Jesus at my side down here in the dangerous, often messy trenches of daily life. I need Jesus the rescuer, ready to wade through pain, death, and hell itself to find me, grasp my hand, and bring me safely through….for right now, if I am to “endure hardship….like a good soldier” as 2 Timothy 2:3 mandates, I need a comrade in arms, a strong commander to take charge of my private war.
And that is exactly who He is, and what He has done.