The making of a General...purpose in pain

There is this popular song that we learnt as kids. It goes like this:
"We are soldiers,soldiers of the cross, in the name of Jesus, we shall conquer"...
I loved that song and loved it even better when we were told to march and sing along and our teacher would then shout some orders for us to follow and we would happily do them and sing along. I loved it, I loved the feeling you get from it. That feeling of being an actual soldier.

But have you taken out time to watch soldiers train or watch them in their camps? If you have then you may be like me that just hated the whole idea. My little experience in NYSC camp for three weeks gave me a very little idea. And as little the experience was,I banished the thought of ever becoming a soldier or having anything to do with one.

Soldiers are trained in the worst of circumstances. They are deprived of sleep,they are given rigorous exercises that make them tough and almost immune to pain.

I have often even heard that if a Soldier mounts a road block on the road,they never collect bribe. Attempting to even give them bribe worsens your predicament.

Why do they act that way? Almost cruel and termed heartless sometimes. The answer is simple :TRANNING. They have been taught how to be tough. They have been trained on how to withstand pressure.
During training,the male and female train together and they see their nakedness end they don't even notice the difference between themselves as male and female. The reason they train together is so that if an enemy decides to tempt the Male soldier by sending lady to seduce them and get them to leave their post,they are actually immune to it because they have 'seen it all'.
Now that's the life of a soldier.

If we are Soldiers of Christ therefore,there are some tough and rough training that we are to be subjected to. As much as we hate to suffer pain we have to go through those trainings to be certified as good soldiers.
So the pain that the Lord who is our commanding officer allows to come our way is for a reason. He allows us go through hunger sometimes, lack at other times,and pain at yet some other times. He is not being wicked when he does that. He is not being uncaring as those from the enemy's camp make us believe. But rather he is training us to be tough,he is training us to be true Soldiers.

Just like some training done by earthly soldiers are seen as stupid and senseless. So it is sometimes when the Lord takes us through training and sometimes since we don't understand his purpose,we leave the process before we are certified as true Soldiers. People may hail us as Soldiers because we wear the 'uniform' and all but we are not true soldiers.

So the next time you face something hard and tough just remember that
"You Are A Soldier In The Making" and that there is a purpose for the pain.
God bless you.

Peace!!!
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN