We All Need a Champion

Life can be discouraging. It can beat you up, tear you down and ruin your day. One day happiness can be your mantle and the next day sadness, grief, stress or tragedy. Every day the imperfection of people has the the potential to cause difficulty in our world. Sometimes it feels impossible to navigate a road shrouded by smoke when you feel your world has caught fire. When the wind picks up, fans the flames of your contained fire and turns it into a raging circle of flames what do you do? What do you do when life feels unbearably hard? When you lose someone you love? When your swallowed by grief? When stress overwhelms you? When the people you depended on fail you? When no one seems to understand how to fight for you? When your left feeling alone?

Being circled by fire with it taunting you and licking at your heels is a scary place to be. Sometimes you end up there not of your own doing. Sometimes you find yourself there emotionally even when your circumstances say you’re not. Sometimes you feel like all the support in your life has failed and you feel alone. Have you ever felt this way? Like you are alone in your fight? Like your facing a raging circle of fire with a toy water pistol in your hand? If it isn’t bad enough to know you are fighting a fire with a water pistol, you then realize you have no water hose to resupply your pistol.

Days happen like this where you just want to know someone is in your corner. Someone is constant. Someone is fighting for you. Someone is beckoning you to win. You look around frantically trying to eye a fighting foe on the other side of the smoke. Hoping there is a comrade in arms that will hop in the ring with you and pull out their own water pistol. Occasionally, a comrade shows up, hops in the mess of your life and squirts like mad with their own futile water pistol. They eventually tire of the fight, you can all only fight a fire so long with a piddly water pistol.

While surrounded by fire, we forget that looking around isn’t where you find a champion. You only find a champion by looking up. A champions banner hangs high in the air. You don’t see it unless you turn your eyes upward. It isn’t your comrade in arms your banner should hang on. He/she isn’t your banner. Exodus 17:15 says Moses built an alter and called it “The Lord is my Banner.”  This is the only place in the Bible that calls God Jehovah Nissi meaning The Lord is my Banner. Just as Jehovah Nissi was the one who battled and won for Moses, He also battles and wins for us.

Traditionally a banner is used to fly the praises of a champion. A winner. Someone who fights the battle and wins. They hang in gymnasiums and arenas around the world glorifying the mighty champions in sports. Armies are known for waving their banner at the front line of battle showing their allegiance to their champion.

We too have a champion. When the fire is circling, we need only to look up to find him. He controls the fire and owns the rain. With His mighty hand He can choose to put out the fire or stand in it and protect us. Either way, every fire is eventually extinguished and He stays until it’s gone. He stays. He always stays.

When the ground is scorched and rubble is all that’s left, He begins the replanting, restoring and rebuilding. His fight is for us and it never stops. He fights continuously for our soul. He fights for our healing and reconciliation back to himself. When everything and everyone else falls away from us, He stays and fights. He is our champion, our Banner.