Spiritual Guerrilla Warfare!

“Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. ”

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has been praying and seeking the face of the Lord in these unprecedented times. As I’ve pondered and sought the Lord concerning the “Stay at Home” and “Social Distancing” demands that government has imposed due to the COVID-19 “pandemic”, I have felt compelled to share this thought. God is using this situation to help us reevaluate two areas that we have neglected…Family and How we Do Church.

Families have been drifting away from a Biblical pattern for too long. The dad has stepped out of his “Priest of the Home” responsibilities and handed it over to Sunday School Teachers, Youth Pastors, and Bishops. Nothing wrong with any of these valuable leadership roles, but because we are too busy we lazily gave up the role of spiritual leadership that must start in the home. The other area is we have learned to play and eat together. All have been a valuable reinjection of love and family, that is Biblically sound experiences.

Church…for too long we have become predictable. We chuckle at having three songs, an offering, testimony service, and a sermon, but our predictability has gone far beyond the service order. The Church, for far too many, has become a place to go and have a shout, dance, light show, and awesome preaching. All of which, again, I’m not speaking against. But, the greatest revival the “Church” has ever known is found in the Book of Acts where the believers went house to house, walked the streets healing the sick, and daily saw the miraculous in action. It wasn’t a once, twice, or three times a week thrill seeking experience for those first believers. It was a daily, moment by moment, seeking the will of God and being led of the Spirit to do His bidding. A moving organism that could not be controlled and certainly could not be predicted as to its next move.

In all of this pandemic, it is my heartfelt belief that the Church must be engaged in Spiritual Guerrilla Warfare! If we look at the enemy (Satan and those who follow his Worldly command), we will know that we are outnumbered by a much larger force. The Church has become so predictable that we’ve made the Devils job easy! All he has to do is show up in a board meeting or cause one person to act up in a service and faith goes out the window. When the larger army can’t predict what the saints of God will do next, he cannot control. When the Holy Ghost is leading in such a way that our strikes are unpredictable, with precision…cutting off the enemies supply chain, confusing the enemy as to where we will hit next….taking a turn at the corner and heading to a backsliders home to pray with them, parking the motorcycle in front of a bar and anointing the walls with oil and praying against the spirit of alcoholism, riding around the drug dealers block and commanding the drug supply chain to dry up, taking the message to a lost world instead of waiting for them to show up at “church”. Unpredictable! Relentless! Smaller in number, yet frustrating the enemy on every hand!

I pray that ASR members and associates will break out of the mold of predictability. Stepping away from a Laodicean mindset where we are at ease with our routines. But that we will become a pesky force to be reckoned with! A body of believers that are willing to turn our motorcycle into a ministry. A bunch of “misfits” perhaps, that have caught the fire of the Holy Ghost to such a degree that it is said, “These be they that turn the world upside down, and they have come hither also!”

Don’t seek predictable military strategy. Seek to become a menace to the enemy…and take it to the enemy by means of “Spiritual Guerrilla Warfare”!!

Mark A Hardin
International Chaplain/Illinois Coordinator