Steve Shultz: "When God's Heroes Fight Each Other"

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Steve Shultz:

"When God's Heroes Fight Each Other"

God has been all over me to write this article for weeks. From the perspective of Heaven, those Heavenly beings who are allowed to watch, are watching Heaven's heroes on earth fight--each other! This would be no problem, except for one main thing. It brings displeasure to the Father. (Read Galatians 5:19-21 to see God's perspective.)

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Imagine two people, male or female (or two ministries)--it doesn't matter the combination, but for various reasons, they find themselves at odds with each other. Now picture all of Heaven watching as certain Believers who are seen as "Saints" of God, suddenly turn their swords away from the enemy and begin to instead, fight each other.

If you could see as the Father sees, you'd see two famous, celebrity-like followers of Christ--friends of God--fighting each other as if the other was the bad guy. That's the reason for this article.

Fighting with Paintballs

As an analogy--though I head up a medium-sized ministry--I've still got that "little boy" living inside me. When I'm not "at the office," I'm at home with my wife and family on our 20 acres, with our own little forest area. We're surrounded by hundreds of acres of farm land--owned by others, of course. Needless to say, we're pretty far out in the country.

I've always thought our little forest area would be a great paintball playing area for my family. But my 18-year-old son, home on leave from college, finally just put action to my idea. He found and bought for himself a nice paintball shooter which unloads up to 15 paintballs per second. Wow! I was just playing with it the other day--what a blast! (The paint in these paintballs, by the way, is made of biodegradable, non-toxic, water soluble food ingredients.)

Now, you need to know that the largest weapon I own is a BB gun. So, even though we have deer often come into our yard and property, they are simply beauty to me--not prey. I'm just not a hunter at heart.

Having said that, I can't wait to own my own version of one of those paintball shooters and "have it out" with my son. We're going to do some big-time laughing, I'll tell you that. The problem is, these things sting. So I intend to get more protective gear than my son uses. Pain is not my thing, but having a good, old fashioned, harmless shootout is! He's going to have more bruises than I am--at least that's what I'm promising him!

More than Bruises

Family life imitates Church-family life. The problem is, we shoot each other with spiritual and much more wounding, PAIN-causing ammunition. Our words. Our factions. Our ambitions. And our separations, either personally or as ministries.

A few paintball bruises soon disappear. But when Heaven's HEROES fight each other, their bruises go deep, and the wounds they cause last long--sometimes decades.

It is on the Lord's heart to bring an end to the fighting of Heaven's heroes with each other.

The Fifty-percent Dilemma

I used to have a pastor I followed for years. I don't know whatever happened to him, but he used to have this favorite "saying." It went something like this: "Fifty-percent of what I believe is wrong," he would say. Then he continued, "The problem is, I don't know WHICH fifty-percent it is!"

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The same is true with each of us. The percentages may differ, but only God knows which part we have right and which part we believe that is skewed. What we hold in common about Jesus, the Christ, is what matters.

All Christians utterly agree on this (or at least we should), "...that is the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved" (Romans 10:8-10).

The Lord recently told me there were too many "IONS" in the air, both positive and negative ions. I asked for clarification, and He said He was talking about opinions (IONS)--both positive and negative opinions--one man or woman against his/her brother or sister in Christ over simple opinions.

Learn to do "the Splits" Better

When one watches a great gymnast suddenly do the "splits," it always amazes the crowd. We wonder how they can accomplish something so hard and make it so easy. It's normally easy only because the person doing the "splits" has practiced and practiced and practiced.

In the same fashion, as Believers in and followers of Jesus (Yeshua), the Messiah, we should be practicing our splits. What I mean by this is not that we should cause them. Rather, when the inevitable Church split or ministry split happens, we should practice loving all parties, and not judging.

People have asked me, "Steve, so what is discernment then if we are to 'judge not that we may not be judged?'" I tell them the following: "Discernment is knowing when something is good or bad, right or wrong. It's normally a fairly easy thing to know, though not always. Judgment is another thing altogether."

I actually practice when I watch the news. When I see those that appear to hate the values of Christians, for instance, I can usually discern when what someone says or does is wrong. But then I step into the box that we can call the "judgment box." While in that box, I quite literally practice loving the person who hates Christians and not judging them for doing so--the whole time knowing that their position may be wrong or their attitude unkind.

If we can practice with those in the world in this way, HOW MUCH MORE should we practice in the Church? If you see someone who is wrong IN THE CHURCH when they split off or come against you, chalk that up for discernment. Then practice stepping into that "judgment box" and loving those same people anyway.

Clearly, Jesus told us to love and bless our enemies, and yes, even those who curse us. That would include those who practice blatant witchcraft. We are to love them while they put curses on us. What an order from God! But Jesus had the authority to give that order to us. And since fellow Christians are not our enemies, how much more should we practice loving them--that is, we should practice "the splits" regarding people who turn away from us.

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