Blood pressure is a funny thing. Side-splitting, as a matter of fact.
Mine tends to take an up-and-down ride about this time every week. The cause? My lovable, heart-pounding-in-the-ears, laughable, make-you-clench-your-teeth-until-your-jaw-pops, delightful, “I-had-better-not-hear-ANOTHER-WORD!” teens that I teach at church on Wednesday nights.
Let me make this excruciatingly clear: I absolutely love those kids. That being said – sometimes I wanna just kill ‘em! (Every time I tell that joke I want to clarify that I’m only joking.)
Here is my task: convince these kids that Jesus loves them, wants them and wants to use them. And I’m afraid that I’m failing miserably at it. I’m fighting an uphill battle against the world at trying to engage their minds to focus on spiritual matters. They are being attacked every day, and I think that most of them don’t even know it. How do I refocus their wandering adolescent minds onto the things that really matter?
The quarrel lately has been over the format of the class. Last summer we tried a video series. The unanimous verdict was: “BORING!” Okay. Let’s do a discussion class? “BORING!” Alright…<the vein in my head pops out right about here> How about a book that we can fill out together? Yeah, you guessed it. “BORING!” The urge to throw my hands up and walk away is almost overwhelming.
But that is what Satan wants me to do, isn’t it? He thinks if he can take me out, he can pick off the kids one-by-one. And he probably could. What’s stopping him? Just the greatest General of all time (literally!) The Commander of the Angel Armies, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lion of Judah, the Prince of Peace … the Son of Man … Jesus Christ of Nazareth. So what’s up now, Satan?! Not so big and bad now are you?! This is a battle that exceeds the bounds of Friendship Church of Christ in Olive Branch, MS. But it is part of the battleground. We have one thing Satan can never have, though. Read the book of Revelation and you’ll find it: we win. We know how the battle ends and we win.
Even the winning side takes heavy losses, though. That’s where I hope to be a battlefield medic. Running through flying shrapnel and hails of bullets trying to reach the wounded before its too late. Staunch the flow, tie it off and get them out of there to someone who can finish the job completely. The battlefield medic isn’t the guy who does the best job, or even does it completely right. He’s the guy who looks like the soldiers; who can get there first, while the battle is still hot.
So maybe I don’t always get the same amount of “respect” from my teens that the older guys get. But that’s okay. I can get closer to them. When Satan is breathing down their necks, I’ll be right behind – breathing down his. Count on it.
Peace.
