WARRIOR OR WORRIER

(8-minute read)

What keeps you up at night? Some of us may lie awake worrying about our job security, finances, or relationship problems and playing out all sorts of scenarios in our minds. During times of stress, we can also experience a reduction in the quality of our sleep from excessive screen usage and caffeine intake that interfere with rest and exacerbate our state of worry.

That said, not many of us are plagued with high-stake problems like global pandemics, natural disasters, cybersecurity threats, or the threat of war. 2 Chronicles 20:3-4 describes a time when King Jehoshaphat received word of a 3-party military alliance advancing towards Judah. Faced with his biggest political crisis yet, Scripture describes the king being instantly ‘alarmed’. Any head of government worth his salt should have called for an emergency meeting with his top military strategists and advisors. Instead, King Jehoshaphat called all the people in Judah to a fast and to seek God. 

In doing so, he became an encouragement for all of us when faced with sudden, life-impacting decisions and dilemmas. Do we muster all our faith in God to face the inevitable with Him, or do we go down the anxiety rabbit hole and let our minds and emotions spiral out of control? In other words, when trouble arrives, will we train ourselves to war or to worry? 

Tellingly, it has been said that worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow: it only saps today of its joy. A Swedish proverb captures this about worrying - that worrying gives a small thing a big shadow. What it means is that while there are real risks inherent in any situation, reacting with a threat bias often makes our problems bigger than they really are.

Alternatively, to war is to seek God and face the situation head-on, no matter how treacherous it appears. We can be sure of three outcomes when we, like King Jehoshaphat, take a quick pause to seek and enquire of God in the midst of a stressful situation.

We Will Pray With Clarity And Understanding

Engaging in endless worrying can cause our judgment to be clouded, messing up our ability to think clearly, especially when we are besieged by problems coming one after another. 

Jehoshaphat had two choices; either to let the scale of the impending invasion overwhelm him, or to right-size God in the crisis. He chose the latter, “Lord, the God of our ancestors, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you.” (2 Chronicles 20:6). And in verse 9, “If calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment, or plague or famine, we will stand in Your presence before this temple that bears Your Name and will cry out to You in our distress, and You will hear us and save us.’

At the same time, the king was also very clear about his own sense of powerlessness in fighting the combined forces that were advancing against him. “For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:12). This is not a concession of defeat but it is recognising that faith is as real as threats are. Faith in the unseen can rise above facts that are seen. How do we articulate our faith when we don’t even have a clear picture of the realities that plague us? 

With a God-corrected and clearer vision, we can see all that’s happening around us and within us. With a clearer mind, we can see better what we really need to do because the enemy will tempt us to make an exit and give up on trusting God altogether.

We Will Be Confident That The Lord Will Fight Our Battles

To know that God is reliable and that we can rely on Him in times of crises does not mean we will know when He will come through for us. This is the hardest part of our faith journey. For it is in these times of waiting and uncertainty that our confidence in God is truly put to the test.

To have confidence in God means to trust His impeccable timing and that His ways are infinitely superior to ours. There's a distinction between God’s higher thinking and our own worst- and best-case scenarios (Isaiah 55:8). Confidence in God engenders an unwavering determination to refrain from relying solely on our own resources to solve problems.

Scripture does not tell us exactly how long King Jehoshaphat and his people waited before God revealed His strategy, God released a Word to Jahaziel just one day before they were to step out into the battlefield. 

“This is what the Lord says to you: Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.” (2 Chronicles 20:15-17).

Somewhere between the utterances ‘For the battle is not yours, but God’s’, ‘march down against them’, ‘Take up your positions’, and ‘Go out to face them’, Jehoshaphat felt a familiar worship song rising within him. “Give thanks to the Lord, for His love endures forever.” (2 Chronicles 20:21). The next day, a team of worshippers led the army out - not with chest-thumping war cries but with songs of praise to God. If they had simply followed human motivational spiel instead of a prophetic word from God, it would have been a death march for them instead of a march to victory. Rather, the Lord rewarded their faith by totally defeating their enemies when He turned them against each other until they were totally decimated.

There is only so much that spiritual self-help can do for us. As a people called to spiritual fellowship with each other, when we share God’s truth and revelations to strengthen others when they are drowning in distress, the whole community becomes more sustainable and stronger for it. 

We Will See Victory According To God’s Plan

If God was going to guarantee victory, why start a war in the first place? To be sure, the war was not God’s idea, but the victory was. Many hurtful and disappointing experiences in life are not God’s idea either. However, Psalm 34:19-20 holds this promise for us, that “The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; He protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.”

When God revealed to King Jehoshaphat that the advancing battle belonged to Him, that God Himself would fight for him, and that he only needed to stand still and see God’s deliverance, He literally only needed the king to just trust Him and see His promise unfold from moment to moment. 

In times of crisis, we tend to focus on the immediate challenges and what’s most urgent more than we spend time thinking about what God has done for us in the past, His track record and promises in the Bible. Today, being proactive and result-oriented are keys to success. So if the only instructions we hear from God is to stop the frantic search for solutions, we may wonder if that is a plan at all. But that was precisely what He instructed King Jehoshaphat – “you need only to be still”. Rather than anxiously pacing around the command centre, the king organized a team of worshippers to sing and lead the army into the battlefield. 

The result was mind-blowing. 

We read in 2 Chronicles 20:29 that “The fear of God came on all the surrounding kingdoms when they heard how the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. And the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God had given him rest on every side.” When God gives us victory, He sets many things in order. 

Also, when God gives us victory, He provides us with more than enough because King Jehoshaphat and his men plundered a great amount of valuables – even “more than they could take away. There was so much plunder that it took three days to collect it.”

Warriors put their faith in God and learn to take risks, while worriers are habitually risk averse, trusting only in their own abilities to get things done. 

What will you be - a warrior or a worrier?

This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BeInReach Session held on 24 February 2024.