God’s Planting – A Reason, a Season, or a Lifetime
“The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners”
Luke 4:18
The last night Willie was here before his release Tony had the opportunity to talk with him, to learn more about him, and to pour into him some last-minute advice and encouragement before he left for Lexington. Many things about Willie surprised Tony. It is true you can’t tell a book by its cover!
Tony’s heart broke when Willie told him he was passed around as a child. Willie never knew his parents and he went through so many foster families that he couldn’t even remember how many families he had lived with, only being able to remember the last three homes he had lived. Children need safety, security, and stability and here Willie as a child was tossed from home to home like a human hot potato. This instability had a profound effect on his life. Thankfully Willie came to realize the path his life could take if he didn’t make a positive decision in a positive direction. Willie enlisted in the military following his high school graduation.
Willie served six years in the National Guard and eight in the Army. Willie served his country with pride and spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq. By this time in his journey Willie was supporting a wife and two children in addition to his sister-in-law and her husband.
As you would expect, Willie sent his paychecks home to support his family and – hopefully – have enough left over for them to put in savings to create a nest egg. That was not to be the case. Upon returning from Iraq Willie discovered that his family had been taking advantage of him and all the money he had been sending home had been spent by his family for their personal pleasure. Immediately the money struggles began and it led to the breaking up of his family and the divorce from his wife. Willie’s life continued into a downward descent that ultimately landed him behind bars having made choices that led him away from God and to the life he had joined the military to avoid.
One of those choices involved using drugs which saw him in and out of various rehab programs and, ultimately, prison. Though never incarcerated for a long time, the months Willie did spend incarcerated were like daggers into his soul as he considered this is the result he’d been trying to avoid since leaving foster care all those years ago
But.
But God specializes in the broken. God loves the broken not because He enjoys seeing us in pain but because He knows that when the veil of the World’s lies have stripped everything away we see God’s truth more clearly. That’s when we in the mission field are mobilized by God’s hand to come into people’s lives like Willie’s.
We got to see a man that was broken but had a passion and desire for God. Every week during our fellowship meetings Willie would ask if he could sing. He’d love to sing and he’d sing a song. Songs he wrote or songs that just was dear to his heart. And poetry. He’d hand us poetry and he’s always had something good to say and he was always encouraging to others. And he was very driven to lead, to learn and to grow. He was a leader.
One thing we know about those who have served in the military is that those people are fighters. And Willie is a fighter and in those months behind bars he fought to get himself back, he fought to get his life back, and he went from being a former soldier in the military to being a current soldier in God’s army. We encouraged Willie to continue learning how to maneuver and handle the armor that God puts on you. Willie learned how to use weapons when he was in the military and now God was giving him new weapons – new tools – for spiritual warfare. Some weapons are for his fight and others are to share with others for their spiritual warfare. The survival gear God has for him and all of us is of the eternal variety and never fails unless we stop using it.
No matter if you’re a mature Christian or if you’re a baby Christian, this is the encouragement of God. Put on the armor. Every day. Help others put on their armor. In spiritual warfare there may be times you have to retreat but there is never a time to surrender. You are the soldier of a mighty God who no one can defeat. Stay in formation. Don’t get separated from your brothers and sisters. Lean into them. Let them lean into you. And, above all, lean into the Lord. This was our prayer for Willie and it is my prayer for you.
We are grateful that we were put into Willie’s life for a reason and a season. God has blessed us and those blessings have come as a result of your partnership with us. May God bless you all greatly both now and in His coming Kingdom.
