"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful." 2 Samuel 11:1-2

Neglected Responsibility

In this passage we see that David has neglected his responsibility to go out to battle, has sent others to fight, stays home, sleeps until evening, finally gets up, and starts looking at a naked woman that is not his wife! Most of us know where the story goes from here, the plot and the resulting pain to himself and others is all too familiar to us as we look around at our families, churches and the broader culture in which we live.

The only real difference between David and too many of us in our modern age is that we do not have to stand at a distance on a rooftop, squinting to try and get a better view of the naked woman’s body. It gets streamed directly into our offices, bedrooms, and laptops in high definition. Thanks to advances in recent technology, it is even available on our cell phones to be seen on demand at any moment or location. So thousands of years later, we men are still suffering from the same progression of events as David did in 2nd Samuel.

The problem starts earlier in the story

While it would be easy to blame our situation on the ubiquity of pornography in this age of technology, I believe the problem starts earlier in the story. Long before David stares at Bathsheeba, long before he has Uriah killed, long before all the terrible consequences have played out in David’s life and that of his family, something much more sinister had taken place. Somewhere along the way he lost sight of the mission that he had been given by God himself. He was the king of Israel and he was supposed to be at war fighting the forces of evil and expanding the kingdom! Yet he chose to stay home.

The lie: you're not here to fight

Unfortunately, most men in the church today have made the same decision. Even worse, many churches today actually tell men that they are not here to fight. And so we stay home and our stories become eerily similar to that of David. But the truth is that just like David, we have a mission from God to fight! We have a mission from God to continue the work of rescuing his people from captivity, we have an enemy who opposes us that is described as “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour’, and at stake are the very souls of people for eternity! There is no greater struggle that we could be involved in.

We are here to fight!

When Paul tells Timothy to “fight the good fight”, he does not say “live like you are in a fight”. It is not a metaphor that Paul is using; he is telling Timothy something very real and very specific. We are here to fight, and we are to fight “good”!

God will win.

Our lives share another very important element with the story of David's failure, God was winning even though David chose to stay home! It says that Israel “destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah”. With or without David, God was winning. It is the same today; with or without us, God is winning. So where is God active and winning battles today?

One area that stands out is Mixed Martial Arts (Ultimate Fighting). I do not believe it is coincidental that while the church is struggling to attract young men, God is raising up men who are committed to him in the one area that everyone agrees young men (actually men of all ages) are drawn to. Fighting. Fighters such as Matt Lindland, Trevor Prangley, Ken Shamrock, Matt Horwich, Matt and Mark Hughes, Pat Miletich, and many more of the most popular people in the sport are all committed Christian men who have chosen to speak openly about their faith in Jesus Christ.

What I will be doing with this blog.

This means that most men in the church today need to get off their blessed assurance and follow God into battle! To that end, I will be using this blog in the future to help train men in the biblical fight principles that Paul outlines in his epistles and we will be using real fighters and real fighting to help illustrate these. But first, I want to talk about the young men in this country who are conspicuously absent from our churches and how we can follow God into the battle for these men's souls.