The Child Within the Warrior
”I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.” Matthew 18:3-4 The Message Bible
The Child Within the Warrior
We wake up every morning to a world that looks much different from the world we once knew as a child. Traffic, jobs, bills, bad habits, personal insecurities, politics; they all complicate and bring an unpleasant noise to the beauty of our songs, our lives, and our ability to hear the voice of the One we love.
My heart longs for simplicity, for moments where my simple songs light up the face of my Father. I long for a place where being held near wasn’t seen as weakness and where dancing barefoot in the grass wasn’t a waste of time. I often long for innocence of childhood; for the nostalgic things that bring a smile to my face.
I often reminisce days as a young girl when I woke up to a mom and a dad who loved each other forever, to the day when my only job was to swing and sing as the world around me simply grew more colorful as the day passed by. Forts, dug-outs, kittens, Red Rider wagons, and baby dolls where my companions as I created a world around me inspired by the creativity of a seven year old mind.
Now at age twenty-three, as I direct the Burn in my city, I often look around me at a discouraged generation of poets, artists, musicians, and psalmists like myself who feel at loss in their effort to capture the innocence and purity of a life in love! It seems that now, places like the Burn are the only places we can find that simplicity and beauty! In a complicated day and age where black and white merge into gray; where the ability has been lost to tell difference between solid rock and sand; where night and day meet as constant twilight; where the line between the masculinity of man and the beauty of woman is blurred…we search for something real!
Instead of a princess gown or a dirty baseball tee, we find ourselves fastening our armor tighter and standing strong on the front lines in our cities. In the face of battle, our minds wonder back to a day when God danced all around us, to a day when being His child seemed so easy, to a day when true love was blowing kisses at the man in the moon and searching the night sky for just one trace of His face. Yet somewhere in this bleak idea of a day long ago, we must realize that we live in the greatest hour of all humanity! We should be encouraged and know that we have something that can never be taken away from us!
There is a child within the warrior, the simple faith and the trust that our God is a big Daddy and He can make the impossible things possible! Our God is such a big Daddy that all else seems so small when He picks us up and holds us in His arms. We find within us the simple faith that our songs activate the armies of Heaven, our times just being with Him can literally shift and shake the foundations of nations…only a child of the King would believe that!
Living in that kind of revelation, the corrupt, the scary, and the weak things look so small in light of the purity, the beauty, and power that hope in our God brings! The child within us is now the passionate warrior that will never back down!
Melissa Gilbreath
BEAUTIFUL !!!