FOLLOWING ORDERS AND RULES (PART 1)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.

2 Timothy 2:4

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In 2003, an Army soldier became disenfranchised with serving and decided to leave his unit and return home. The unauthorized absence went on for more than 30 days and the soldier was placed in deserter status. He received an Other Than Honorable discharge, lost his military benefits, and was required to pay back thousands of dollars he had received as a bonus to serve his nation. Young and naïve, the soldier failed to grasp the depth of the commitment he was making when enlisting and coming under an additional set of stringent regulations, the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

As someone who served in the United States Navy for more than 28 years, I can tell you that being in the military leads to a person giving up many of the freedoms that people in the civilian sector get to enjoy. For obvious reasons, military service requires staunch personal discipline as one must be laser focused on the mission at hand and that mission often requires the service member to work long hours at any time of the day and deploy to places abroad on a moment’s notice, sometimes for months. My average deployments were anywhere from six to none months and in one instance, I served in Djibouti, Africa for more than a year. That’s a long time to be away from home and the things you love.

It’s interesting to me to read the words of the Apostle Paul in verse 4 of 1 Timothy 2 as he mentions the duties of a soldier more than 2,000 years ago. He writes:

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.

Like today, a soldier in New Testament times fell under the leadership of a senior person in charge of their unit, the commanding officer. This officer carried the power to give orders and the soldier was required to follow those orders. It was their duty to do so, even if those orders might interfere with civilian affairs. The responsibility of the soldier was to their unit and the commanding officer in charge. Violating that responsibility would lead to them being held accountable.

During my career, I certainly worked with many commanding officers and made sure I complied with all orders. The only time that wouldn’t happen is if an order was given that was unlawful as one serving was not required to carry out such an order. A commanding officer had immense power but wasn’t ever above the law.

Now, you might ask yourselves why I’m spending so much time explaining military framework in regard to senior/subordinate relationship in a Christian devotion. Well, there’s definitely a huge parallel to be drawn to our responsibility as believers, right?

In this model, our Lord is our spiritual commanding officer and unlike a worldly commander, He never gives orders that are inappropriate or unlawful. Every demand He makes of His soldiers, those who are to serve Him fully, are just and fair. As those who go out onto the battlefield of life to follow and fight with Him, we are obligated and responsible to follow His commands without fail or compromise. And we are to do so without getting tangled up in civilian affairs which in this case are the ways of the world, ways that often run counter to the orders of our Lord.

Living our lives as Christian soldiers while following the greatest commanding officer ever requires unwavering dedication, loyalty, and self-sacrifice as we comply with the scriptures and their orders along with the leading of the Holy Spirit but when it’s all said and done with, there’s no better life to live than the spiritually disciplined one, one that results in us retiring from worldly service into the eternal life and glory of the Kingdom belonging to the Lord we followed.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.