Welcome And Why Words Matter

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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Zamparini Adrift With No Water

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So imagine you're in a life raft that's roughly the size of a queen-size mattress, and you're in the middle of the ocean with two other men, and there are sharks swimming around your raft, and there's no land in sight. So this is where Louis Zampurini was in May of 1943. So he and two other men are floating somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during World War II after their B-24 bomber went down. So almost everyone in the crew died. But Zamporini and these two other men pulled themselves into two small rubber rafts, and they have it with them. And the only thing they have with them other than these boats are a few pieces of candy and half a chocolate bar. They have no survival supplies and most importantly, no drinking water. And the nearest land is over a thousand miles away. So on day 27, one of the men dies and they lose one of the rafts. And on day 33, a Japanese aircraft spots them in the ocean and strafes them with machine gun fire. So the men, realizing what's happening, they roll into the water, which again is shark-infested, as the Japanese pilot strafes them eight different times. And miraculously, neither of them are killed, nor is their raft sunk. And so they continue on trying to survive in the ocean by catching rainwater with their mouths, eating raw fish and birds, and they they basically continue drifting until day 47 when they're finally picked

Captured And Broken In Prison

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up. Unfortunately for these two Americans, they were picked up by the Japanese Navy. So both men were taken captive and sent to a series of different prison camps. Zamporini was eventually transferred to a prison camp where a guard nicknamed the Bird selected him for special attention because he found out that Zamporini was an Olympian in a past life, I guess you could call it. He was a runner and he wanted to make an example out of him. So he would beat Zamporini constantly. And during one of the beating sessions, the bird lined up over 200 Japanese soldiers that were in that camp and had them punch Zamporini in the face one by one. And reportedly, Zamporini never fell during this process. So Zamporini spent nearly two and a half years in Japanese captivity where he was starved, beaten, tortured, and really worked almost

Freedom, Addiction, And A Revival Night

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to death. And he was eventually rescued and returned to the United States, but his issues didn't stop there. He became an alcoholic, he had night terrors every night, he was filled with just rage and anger, and just ultimately was slowly killing himself. His wife, obviously worried about him, decided to drag him to a tent revival in their area where a young Billy Graham was preaching. So at the event, Zamporini came down to the altar and gave his life to Christ. Almost immediately, the nightmare stopped. He began to control his drinking, and he was no longer filled with the same level of rage and anger that he had before. And he actually at one point went back to Japan, this was long after the war had ended, in order to track down some of the prison guards that had beaten and tortured him. I mean, he did so in order to forgive them face to face. He even tried to track down the bird to forgive him as well, but the bird refused to even see Zamparini. Louis Zamparini was on this planet for 97 years, and he showed an unbelievable amount of resilience during that time.

James Gets Straight To The Point

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Now I want to transition to talking about the writings of James, the brother of Jesus, because I just absolutely love this and it applies to what we're talking about. James is not a big fan of sugarcoating things or really, you know, kind of warming up his audience. He just goes right for the jugular. And with that in mind, here is how he begins the book of James that we have in our modern New Testament. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Count it all joy. So notice what James didn't say. He didn't say, Look on the bright side, you know, let's try to find the good in this situation. He said, Count it. As in, do the accounting, you know, tally it up, count it up, and recognize that you are actually suffering in this moment and don't look away from it. So

Count It Joy And Let It Finish

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what's happening here? Your faith is being tested, but the test itself isn't in vain. The test has a purpose and a product. And the product is steadfastness. This goes back to what we talked about yesterday as it pertains to remaining under the weight of your circumstances. If you let your situation run its full course, it will produce something that James calls being complete. It will forge you. And here's the reality: Zamparini didn't come out of 47 days on the raft, drifting in the ocean and two and a half years of torture in Japanese prison camps whole, but he did emerge wholly different. He came out shattered, but his process wasn't finished, right? His process wasn't finished even when he was rescued. God was still using his circumstances and his decision making to refine him. His wholeness came later. But before that, he had to struggle, he had to surrender. And through grace, he became willing to even forgive the men that tried to destroy him spiritually, mentally, and physically. And just think about this. I love this. The trial didn't end at the raft. The trial didn't end on a Japanese naval vessel. The trial didn't end at a prison camp. It ended at the altar of a Billy Graham revival. The man that walked into that tent that night was in Adam, and the man who walked out was in Christ. A complete man, a man just starting his sanctification journey. And just like with Zamborini, we don't get to decide when our forging process is done, do we? We can only decide whether or not we are going to hold up under the weight and endure it.

Your Trial Might Be God’s Forge

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So I want you to consider this question today. What trial in your life are you labeling as punishment that God is actually using to forge you? You know, being shot down was not God somehow abandoning Zamparini. Being tortured by the bird was not somehow God forgetting him. His alcoholism and night terrors, they were not the end of his story. Now you didn't know it at the time, but those were just stages in his eventual refinement. So if you found yourself at a place in life where you think God has abandoned you, I would encourage you to change your perspective and realize that you are still in the middle of a process that God is ultimately using for his glory and your betterment. Again, count it joy. Not because it's not going to hurt a little bit, but because you know that it has a positive outcome.

Final Charge To Stay Sharp

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Stay sharp.