VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers

When I told my older brother in Scotland that I was becoming and Australian Army Chaplain, ‘Great!’ he exclaimed, ‘God’s army is invading the Australian Army!’ God’s army, like the Australian Army, is made up of volunteers. There is no conscription. David, the sweet psalmist of Israel said it best, ‘Your people shall be volunteers, in the day of Your power…’ Psalm 110:3a NKJV. Psalm 110 is called a ‘Messianic psalm,’ i.e., a Gospel psalm. No one enters God’s army kicking and screaming. No one becomes a Christian against their will. Indeed, another version of the Bible renders the same thus, ‘Your troops will be willing on your day of battle…’ Psalm 110:3a NIV. God’s army therefore is made up of volunteers, people who willingly worship and serve God.

I first heard the word ‘voluntold’ used when I was in the army. It describes the idea illustrated in the following sentence. The sergeant major said, ‘I need three volunteers, you, you and you!’ However, there’s none of this regarding the prophet Isaiah. When the Triune God asked, ‘“Whom shall I send, and who shall go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”’ Isaiah 6:8b. Isaiah was being sent on an onerous mission to rebuke God’s disobedient people.

The enemy strives to remain undetected in modern warfare. From stealth aircraft to missile-loaded drones. No longer do soldiers stand in trenches firing bullets at each other across ‘no man’s land.’ The Christian wars against an invisible enemy too, an enemy who shoots ‘fiery darts’ that can smoulder in any chinks in the Christian’s armour. ‘Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints’ Ephesians 6:11-18. Who would volunteer for an army that fights an enemy it cannot even see? – such a formidable enemy as Satan and his host from hell? Only those who God has enabled to see the invisible, which is only those who have been born of the Spirit. ‘Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’ John 3:3b, such as was Moses, who ‘By faith ... forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible’ Hebrews 11:27.

Whether a heavenly host or a detachment of demons both are spiritually recognised. ‘But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned’ 1 Corinthians 2:14. In God’s army the faithful wear night vision goggles, enabling the discerning to observe the movements of the forces of darkness as plain as day! (2 Cor. 2:11)

Enlist now! Volunteer! And ‘Be all you can be in [Christ’s] army!’