Ode to An Old Warrior

I was reminded of an old teaching as I was receiving prayer in church yesterday.  The elder praying for me alluded in his prayer of my failure to properly recognize my place in an epic war (and the fact that I'm on the winning side).  To put it bluntly, I had allowed my "sword to drag".  I wasn't fighting.  I had fallen asleep in the foxhole. I was immediately reminded that this teaching wasn't novel to me, but his notion that I am a warrior and should act like one, was thrust upon me a long time ago.

Most of the biblical teaching that has stuck with me through the years came from a few gifted men during the decade in my 20's when I was spiritually immature and malleable (not that I'm not now, I'm still very immature...to the delight of my boys and the chagrin of my wife).

A particularly important slice of that "era" was the "men's meetings" that my old, beloved pastor, Harold Burchett held for any man who was willing to come.  Every Saturday for a few years (I think they were still going on when I moved to Richmond) about 50 men gathered together at 7:00 am for about an hour and sat in awe at the wisdom that came forth.  I believe that even then most of us knew that years later we would all look back longingly at this man of God who had such a deep love for God and desire to see men transformed from mere boys....and transformed we were.  We would have gone to battle for Harold, because we desperately craved to rise above the mediocre expectations that the world, even the church, had for its men.  Harold was giving us back our birthright.  He was showing us for one hour a week what God required of us to be men of valor, men who, while in this world, were not of this world. We arrived as weaklings, we left as warriors.  I still am touched by what an effect Harold had on my life as a Christian man.  He taught me how to live, how to fight, how to be a man of God.

Now, I don't know where Harold is today, but I imagine there are still a few men who are still learning from his life of faith and love for Christ.  May all of us who ever became men through him, do the same to the young men around us, and so on and so forth (2 Tim.2:2)