Growing Spiritually
During Deployments
Main Text: James 1:1-2
Deployments are prime time opportunities to grow spiritually. Heading downrange presents a rucksack full of trials for you and your family. Loneliness, austere conditions, experiences that break our hearts and bruise our souls, these trials provide fertile soil for growth. These are trials that the book of James talks about. Unbelievably, we are called to,
“count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” Jas 1:2-4
But why is it that many just go through deployments rather than grow through them? Even worse, some don’t merely go through them but they shrink, stagnate and drift away from Jesus. What is it that causes a drift effect when there is so much potential for a deployment to be maximum growth opportunity? I hope to answer that question and provide you with spiritual growth Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) for you and your family while you are downrange.
TTP #1 —Embrace Your Deployment as God’s Call on Your Life: When the recently delivered nation of Israel crossed the Red Sea, God provided them with an incredible navigation tool.
“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.” Ex 13:21
They were told when the pillar stops, you stop. When the pillar moves, you move. Never could an Israelite doubt the eight digit grid coordinate will of God!
You may be jealous that Israel had such an advantage. But guess what?
You have a similar reality check of God’s geographic will for your life. They are called deployment orders. They are your 8½ x 11 pillar that reminds you that you’re exactly where God wants you to be. During hard times, I’ve actually taken mine out of my wallet, unfolded them and stared at them as my reality check that God placed me exactly where He wants me.
Further in the Israelite’s foot movement through the wilderness, the Lord revealed Himself as,
“the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.” Dt 1:31
And furthermore,
“He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.” Dt 31:8
What a beautiful promise. The Lord is the advance party on your deployment. As Christ’s followers on deployment, we don’t have a point man, we have a point God.
Know that when you follow God’s call, God follows through. Hudson