A soldier of Christ is a ninety-pound grandmother who can barely walk without her walker but who stands up at a town hall meeting and tells the mayor that what he is doing is wrong and she will not be silent about it. A soldier of Christ is the blue collar worker who refuses to cast his vote for either candidate because both of them have credible accusations of unspeakable evil swirling around them and he will not put his name beside wickedness just because everyone else is doing it. A soldier of Christ is the teenager who walks away from the party when the drugs come out even though it means losing every friend she thought she had. A soldier of Christ is the man who finds a wallet full of cash and returns it to its owner when no one would ever have known if he kept it.
This is what it means to carry the cross. Not armor. Not weapons. Not the strength of your body but the strength of your conviction when everything around you is screaming to take the easy road.
The Path Is Not Wide
Christ told us plainly that the path is narrow and few will find it. He did not say this to discourage us but to prepare us for the truth that following Him would never be easy. The world is designed to pull you away from that narrow road at every turn. Every billboard and every screen and every whisper of temptation exists to drag you off the path and into the wide road where the crowds walk toward destruction without even knowing where they are headed.
This call is not a whisper of comfort. It is the trumpet of eternity sounding in your soul. It does not promise safety and it does not promise wealth. It promises a cross. And the cross is not a decoration to hang around your neck or a piece of jewelry to show off your faith. It is a burden to lift upon your shoulders every single day of your life.
Nobody wants to tell you this but I will tell you plainly because you need to hear it. Being a good person is hard.
Being Good Is Hard
It is not natural. It does not come easy. The world and the flesh and the enemy are working against you every moment of every day and if you think you can coast through life without fighting for your own righteousness then you have already lost the battle before it began.
The world says indulge yourself. The flesh says feed me. Pride says exalt me. Greed says take what you can while you can. Lust says no one will ever know. Laziness says someone else will do the right thing so you don’t have to. And every single one of these voices is a lie from the pit of hell designed to keep you comfortable while your soul rots from the inside out.
To deny yourself is to die before you die.
To lay aside your crown before men strip it from you. To give away what the world treasures before moth and rust take it from your hands. It is to bow low not as a coward but as one who knows that God raises the valley and humbles the mountain.
If you think you are a good Christian but you see no problem stealing from your employer because no one will ever notice the missing inventory, you are lying to yourself and you are lying to God. If you claim the name of Jesus on Sunday but spend the rest of the week cutting corners and bending rules and justifying your compromises, then you have not picked up your cross at all. You have set it down at the foot of the hill and walked away while pretending you are still climbing.
Look At What Surrounds You
Open your eyes and look at the world you live in. Satan’s corruption is everywhere and it is so normalized that most people do not even see it anymore. They swim in it like fish swim in water, never questioning whether the water itself is poison.
Drugs flood our streets and destroy our families and we shrug and say that’s just how it is. Pornography is pumped into every phone and every computer and we pretend it is harmless even as it rewires the brains of children before they are old enough to understand what they are seeing. Greed has become a virtue celebrated on magazine covers and business channels while the poor are told to work harder and stop complaining. The products in your home were made by ten-year-old children who live in the factories where they work, who will never see a childhood, who exist as slaves to feed our appetite for cheap garbage we do not need.
Our leaders stand accused of crimes so horrible that I cannot even write them without feeling sick and yet we are told to pick a side and vote anyway as if choosing between two evils is somehow our Christian duty. Nuclear weapons sit in silos ready to turn God’s creation into ash the moment someone decides the time has come. Wars rage across the earth for profit and power while young men bleed out in the dirt so that old men can add another zero to their bank accounts.
This is the kingdom of shadows. This is the empire of the enemy. This is what you are called to stand against, not with a sword in your hand but with the truth in your heart and the courage to say no when everyone around you is saying yes.
The War Within
The true battlefield lies not in the streets of your city or the halls of your government. It lies within. The heart is the ground upon which victory or defeat is decided and no man can follow Christ without first waging war against himself.
Paul named it plainly when he wrote that he does not do the good he wants to do but the evil he does not want is what he keeps on doing. And yet even in this cry of frustration he declared hope. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What chains still bind you at the foot of the cross? Some are bound by shame and they remember their denials and their betrayals and they dare not draw near to the throne of grace. But Peter denied the Lord three times before the rooster crowed and still the risen Christ met him by the fire and restored him and commanded him to feed his sheep. Others are bound by doubt and like Thomas they say unless I see the wounds with my own eyes I will not believe. And yet Christ in his mercy showed him his hands and his side and said do not disbelieve but believe.
No chain is stronger than his mercy.
No prison holds tighter than his blood can break.
But the chains must be brought to the cross. They must be laid down and not hidden and not excused. A soldier cannot march to battle with his legs still bound. And yet many keep their chains. Many cling to the sins that crucified him while hoping to serve Christ with their mouths while keeping secret altars to other gods in the shadows of their hearts.
The Armor You Already Have
The soldier of Christ does not fight alone and is not left wandering through the wilderness with only his will for company. The Spirit has been given and it is not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. This is the living strength that raises the weary and teaches the tongue to pray when words fail and groans within with sighs too deep for human language.
Paul wrote from prison walls and iron chains about the armor that every believer has been given. Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet the readiness given by the gospel of peace. This is no idle imagery. This is the armor that holds you when the arrows of the enemy fall like fire from the sky.
The shield of faith quenches the lies of the accuser who whispers that you are too far gone and too stained and too weak. The helmet of salvation guards the mind against despair when the night grows long and hope seems distant. The sword of the Spirit which is the word of God cuts through every deception and every whisper that says you are not forgiven and not chosen and not beloved. When the soldier learns to wield this sword no force of hell can stand before him.
What Will You Do With Your Days
The time is short. The days are evil. The hour is late. And yet the kingdom is unshaken and the throne is unbroken and the word is unchained. What will you do with your breath and your hands and your days? Will you spend them on shadows and distractions and the endless scroll of meaningless content? Or will you pour them out for the eternal flame that burns in the heart of every soul who chooses to follow the Lamb wherever he goes?
You are not called to walk in ease. You are called to walk through fire. You are not called to blend with shadows. You are called to shine like light in the darkness. You are not called to live safe. You are called to live eternal.
Look at the saints who walked before you and drew strength from their example. Stephen was stoned in the streets and yet as the rocks crushed his body he saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God and he died with forgiveness on his lips for the very men who murdered him. Paul was beaten and bound and shipwrecked and left for dead and yet he sang hymns in the midnight prison and wrote letters that still shake the world two thousand years later. John was exiled on Patmos and left to die alone and yet he received visions of glory that burn in the hearts of believers to this very day.
These are not myths. These are not distant heroes from another age. They were men and women of flesh and blood who carried the same cross and endured the same shame and who now wear crowns of life in the presence of the King they served.
The King Is Coming
This hope is not wishful dreaming but a holy certainty anchored in the empty tomb and the promise of the one who conquered death itself. John saw it on Patmos when the sky split open and one came riding on a white horse clothed in a robe dipped in blood and called Faithful and True. His eyes were like flames of fire and on his head were many crowns and from his mouth came a sharp sword with which to strike the nations. And on his robe and on his thigh a name was written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
And to those who endured and held fast the confession of their faith and kept the testimony of the Lamb even when it cost them everything, to them is given the white stone and the new name and the robe washed in blood and the seat at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Rise Now
So rise. Cast off the chains of fear. Break the silence of compromise. Do not live half alive and half loyal and half true. Christ did not die halfway. He did not rise halfway. He gave all. He conquered all. And he calls you to follow all the way.
The world will try to claim you. It will offer crowns of dust and treasures of rust and pleasures that fade before morning. Do not bow. Do not kneel to Babylon.
For what is offered is nothing compared to what is promised. Paul wrote it clearly: the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. This is not the whisper of a timid religion. It is the battle cry of the saints. Fight. Stand. Endure. For your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Stand when the world bends. Stand when your knees tremble. Stand when your strength fails because he is your strength. Stand with armor fastened and sword drawn and faith burning. Stand because the night is nearly over and the day is at hand.
You do not need to be strong. You do not need to be mighty. You do not need to be wealthy or educated or powerful by the standards of this dying world. You only need to choose. Choose good over evil. Choose truth over lies. Choose the narrow path over the wide road. Choose to be the kind of person who does the right thing even when no one is watching and even when it costs you everything.
That is what it means to be a soldier of Christ. Not armor. Not swords. Not crusades or conquest. Just ordinary people who refuse to bow to the darkness and who carry their cross one step at a time toward the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
The cross is before you. The empty tomb is behind you. The Spirit is within you. And the King is coming.
Rise and do not look back. For the battle is the Lord’s and the victory is already won.
Praise Jesus.
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