Here is a report about the work that goes on in our Urban Missions all over the U.S., where the truly destitute take harbor.

 If you consider yourself an evangelist for Christ this post will rivet you.

  

Resistance in Rescue

 She stood there with her fingers in her ears, her face turned into the door jam. Her heart and mind fighting some battle in the moment.

Eternity and time collide in the UGM chapel. If the veil of our visible reality could be pulled back, we’d see beasts and beings, life and death wrestling over destiny and destruction. 

It’s a confrontation with demons in the flesh, the past or the present.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” -‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭6‬:‭12‬

 ‭Spiritual transformation doesn’t come without spiritual resistance.

There’s a war being fought in the mind and heart and in the depths of the soul.

It’s a fight with terrors, troubles, abuse and abuses, arguments, wounds, fears, mistrust, lies, deception, false identities, bruised and broken minds.

Gospel work is bringing a message of hope and healing into the madness and the mess. 

It’s a rescue mission in the stormy seas of people’s complicated lives that are all wrapped up in the ocean seaweed of life moments, happenings, horrors, hells and hemorrhages. We are caught in Jonah’s deep decent, fleeing the Lord…but drowning.

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭10‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭

“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”

Singing songs of deliverance isn’t easy.

Not everyone in need, wants help.

Not everyone who is sick, wants to get well.

Not everyone hurting, wants free.

Not everyone crying, wants comforted.

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Psalms‬ ‭32‬:‭7‬-‭9‬

“You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.”

But Christ finds us wherever we are at and continues to compel us to surrender. 

His mercy chases us.

In these chapel services I watch women and men present themselves as conduits for the love, truth and power of Jesus to flow through. 

They stand as Christ’s heart and hands extended. 

Singing, praying, holding, hoping, hurting, weeping and fighting for all that is good, beautiful and true to conquer.

‭Zephaniah‬ ‭3‬:‭17

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

 ‬ ‭Some of the greatest battles ever fought have been waged in small, stuffy, packed crisis shelter basements like this one.

To God be the glory and may the resistant eventually become the redeemed. 

Pastor Eric Blauer.