Bottom line up front: “Moving Towards the Friction”

Introduction: Recently I listened to a senior Army officer speak of “moving towards the friction” as part of his remarks. That phrase struck me. Why? Because resistance is inevitable if you’re moving forward. You’ll encounter it. Be we dare not ever accept defeat. Do we all suffer setbacks? Yes. Do we all know disappointments? Of course. Do we all have areas to improve? Always. “Moving towards the friction” is equally true in our spiritual lives.

Relevance: In a book I read this week, the author penned these words: “How often do you pray and ask God to test you? More frequently it’s the other way around for many of us—we want God to spare us from trouble and remove all obstacles from our paths. But when we ask for that, we’re essentially praying that we won’t grow . . . Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, reminded us, ‘The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the LORD tests hearts’ (Proverbs 17:3, ESV). If we want to grow, we can’t back away from places where we see our faith clashing with the culture around us. Instead, we can view that friction as an opportunity for our faith to be tested . . . Embrace that conflict with the courage of the Lord.”

Encouragement/takeaway: There’s a vast difference between bravado and courage. Spiritual warfare is just as real (I would argue that it’s more significant, in fact) as armed conflict. Artillery, infantry, reconnaissance, and engineers are not military means alone, in other words; their invisible but quite real spiritual corollaries undergird the world of ideas that rule the world. Ergo, as we move towards the friction, may we do so grounded in redemptive truth.