As troubling as her request was, my response was even more disturbing. I really can’t tell you why I said what I said. All I know is that without hesitation, I looked at her and told her, “God is going to make it snow to prove to you that he loves you.”
I know now that the ultimate proof of God’s love is that he sent his Son Jesus to die on the cross in our behalf. It’s just not what came to my mind right then. The very moment I heard myself say it, I wanted to give myself a little time. But because I was in panic mode, instead of saying that God might need more than twenty-four hours, I told her it would definitely happen within twenty-four hours. I don’t remember any of the conversation after that. I just went back to my dorm room, closed the door, pulled down the shades, turned off the lights, fell on the floor, and began to pray.
I wasn’t completely sure what had just happened. Did God speak to me and I simply echoed his words? Or did I overstep my boundaries and make a promise I could not keep? So as I prayed, I tried to cover all my bases: God, if that wasn’t you, could you make it happen anyway? I’m new at this. I have been on this path for only three months. I’m still trying to find my way.
But what I believed happened was that God spoke to me, that I heard his voice, that he told me to speak to the creation and declare its intention. And that’s exactly how I said it to her. I declared that it would happen. I was standing on the water. Now I was looking at the wind. And maybe as I prayed with uncertainty, I too found myself drowning under the force of the waves.
And then I fell asleep. And while I was praying and sleeping, I didn’t know what my friend was doing. Apparently, she was telling every person she saw that God was going to make it snow for her because he loved her. It’s amazing how fast a story like that will spread across a university campus.
It wasn’t more than an hour later that my roommate walked into our room and disrupted my sleep—I mean prayers. He didn’t say hello or ask me how I was doing. He just simply looked at me and asked, “Have you looked outside?”
I remember getting up and walking cautiously to the window, taking a deep breath, and pulling up that ugly yellow shade. I thought he was asking that question to mock me, to let me know I had lost all my credibility, but that was not the case at all. When the shade cleared the window, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was snow everywhere. It clearly had been snowing almost from the moment I had hidden myself away, afraid of what I had done.100
You can try to explain this any way you want, and if you find it hard to believe, so do I and I was there. But that moment became a part of my history nearly forty years ago, and I have never been the same since. I have been listening to the voice of Jesus calling me to where I clearly cannot go without him.
Some want to treat Peter’s walking on the water and seeing the wind as only a metaphor. This is a massive disservice to that account. We need to allow the truth of his story to dismantle our views of reality and open us to the endless possibilities of what God can do with us in this life.
I know that God still speaks. He still does the impossible. He still calls us to lives that can be lived only by faith. Can we really walk on water? Can we really call down fire from heaven? All I know is that on one particular day, I heard a voice telling me to declare to the universe that the snow would come—and it did. All I can really speak to is that at least for a moment, I was connected to all things and heard the snow before it fell, and I cannot live with any lesser truth than this.
The Eternal One
Enoch was taken from this life so that he would not experience death. He could not be found on the earth because God had taken him away. Before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. Scripture summarizes his life this way: “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more.”101 We tend to see life and death as linear and sequential. This might be why we see time and eternity in the same way. The warrior knows that eternity does not wait on time. For the warrior, eternity is now, and now is eternity. The warrior walks in the eternal because they walk in oneness with God.
Abraham looked forward to a city that had not yet been built; Joseph lived through years of imprisonment knowing that his dreams were windows into the future; Noah built an ark before the world had ever known rain. Each of them lived as if they were time travelers coming from the future and preparing us for what was yet to come.
The warrior does not live in the past, nor are they ever trapped in the present. While their life may seem extraordinary, all they have done is reclaim their humanity. They understand that their strength is not formed in standing alone but in connectedness to all things. They see God everywhere and always moving. They see his fingerprints in every page of human history. They feel him moving in the wind, hear his roar in the ocean, and know his presence in every breath.
Some find it hard to see God anywhere. The warrior finds it impossible not to see him everywhere. Everything is connected. This is your power; this is your strength—that you’re never alone. You are one with God and with all of his creation.
Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes that God has “set eternity in the human heart.”102 The implications of this verse reach far beyond everything we’ve considered so far in this chapter. Though you are part of creation and were created to be connected to all things, you are most profoundly connected not to time, not to space, but to eternity. This is what makes humanity different from every other creation in the created order. Even while you are bound in time and space, you cannot be contained by it. You belong to eternity.
Jesus said, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”103 The implications of this verse and the verse in Ecclesiastes are so powerful that they may actually reach beyond our comprehension. The connectedness that we are called to goes beyond what is visible to the invisible, beyond the created to the eternal, beyond the finite to the infinite.
The warrior does not belong in time, for the soul of the warrior is timeless. The warrior is both fully present in the moment and fully present in the eternal. The warrior sees the eternal in every moment, the infinite in every detail. The warrior knows they can know heaven on earth, and, more importantly, they can bring heaven to earth. The way of the warrior is the end of separation. The warrior is one with all things.
CODE 8
The Warrior Stands in Their Pain
The warrior bears their wounds well. Their scars carry a beauty that only sacrifice can create. The warrior never hides their scars. They know their scars are the story of their life. The one who has no wounds has never fought a battle. The warrior trusts only the person who bears wounds openly and wears them well. Some wounds are so deep that they take years to heal; other wounds are unseen, and the healing takes a lifetime. The warrior knows that the battle will cause them great pain, anguish, and suffering. You do not go to war because you think you can avoid defeat. You do not go to war because you believe that victory is certain. You go to war because you know you must fight.
I do not want you to lose the intent of my teachings. You must never forget that the warrior fights only for peace. And while we will always live in a world of war and rumors of war, the warrior has a single intention: to win the battle raging within. If you are intent on studying your adversary and securing your victory, you must know yourself. You must know that the battle is within. This is the battle I seek to help you win. The world has always been at war, and if left to its own devices, war will be not only our history but our destiny.
The pages of this book carry one clear intention: to win the battle for peace one person at a time, one heart at a time, one soul at a time. You cannot bring peace to the world if you have never come to know peace within yourself. And strangely enough, even if you have been given the luxury of living in a time of peace or in a place on this earth that is untouched by war, your soul will not know such luxury. The peace y
ou long for will come only when you choose to face your greatest battles. If you run from your fears, you will never conquer them. If you run from your pain, you will never be free of it. If you run from the darkness within, you will never become a warrior of light, which is both your intention and your destiny. Your wounds do not disqualify you from taking the warrior’s path. It would be fair to say that the warrior is more familiar with pain than the one who has surrendered to a lesser intention.
The warrior stands in their pain. Their wounds are their badge of honor. Every battle is first fought within. Every victory secured for your future is first fought for in your struggle for faith. To live in the light, you must first face your inner darkness. Your external battles are won or lost in your inner world. You cannot separate world peace from inner peace. You cannot separate the daily battles you will face from the unseen battles that seem faceless.
Even in the midst of writing these chapters, I faced a crossroads in which I had to decide whether to stand or withdraw. I had been invited to speak at a significant event. What once seemed an unprecedented opportunity now carried the weight of unimaginable controversy and pain. Without going into detail, I felt the social and even global weight of responsibility of whether I should withdraw from speaking at the event or honor my commitment. Multiple speakers chose to cancel, and I understood their reasoning, or at least their decision. But as I prayed, I heard such a clear voice speak to the depth of my soul. As clearly as I heard the opening words of this book, “The warrior is not ready for battle until they have come to know peace,” I heard these words: “The warrior stands where others withdraw.”
I went and I stood in the midst of people who were carrying great pain. They had been wounded and even betrayed by the leaders in whom they had put their trust. One person deeply affected by the controversies and wounds that surrounded them expressed to me, “I thought leaders ran into the fire and not away from it.”
If you choose the way of the warrior, you will bear many wounds. Yet the wounds you will bear will not end with your own. The warrior bears the wounds of others. The warrior bears the wounds of the world. The warrior knows the only wounds that can heal are the ones they are willing to bear within them.
In victory every warrior looks to be brave and courageous. Yet it is defeat that strips you bare and forces you to see your truest self. Success allows you to maintain the illusion of who you are. It is in failure that you come to know yourself best. The skills of a warrior may help them in victory, but they are useless to them in defeat. When you face defeat, all you’re left with is yourself. It is then that you will face your greatest battle. You will find yourself at war with the darkness within. Your greatest danger will be to convince yourself that you are beyond the reach of this darkness, that you have traveled so far that your soul is impenetrable. Yet the warrior learns that their greatest victories and defeats often come like two sides of the same sword.
The battles we fight become inescapably both internal and external. Victory in one battle does not secure for us victory in another. You may be winning the battle within to live your most heroic and courageous life and yet still lose your job and find yourself in financial peril. You can in the same moment that you achieved the pinnacle of success in your career come home to face the end of your marriage. We’ve seen through the tragic loss of extraordinary talents such as Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade that the victories on the outside may only be hiding the battles lost within. All of us are portraits of contradiction. In those moments we feel most indomitable, we find ourselves most fragile.
Fire and Ashes
The prophet Elijah once stood alone against nearly a thousand false prophets. With a multitude of onlookers, he challenged the false prophets to a battle to prove the power of the gods they worshiped. The battle was to be conducted with some unexpected weapons and circumstances. Both Elijah and the false prophets would build an altar and prepare an offering to their gods, yet they would not light an actual fire as they would typically do in order for the animal sacrifices to be consumed. Elijah set the terms of the challenge: the false prophets would pray to their god and ask for fire to come down from heaven and consume the altar. Then Elijah would pray to his God and make the same request.104
Elijah and the false prophets agreed to the terms, and the battle began. The measure of success would be simple: the deity who answers by fire is the true God. All of the bystanders understood the scenario and what was at stake. Elijah put his entire reputation and the reputation of God on the preposterous notion that God would send this fire from heaven.
The prophets of Baal cried out to their god from morning until noon, but there was no response. They danced and danced to get his attention to no avail. They shouted louder and louder, but Baal was silent. And then, as was the custom of their dark religion, Baal’s prophets began cutting themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed as an offering to their god. But nothing they could do could make a god who did not exist answer their prayers. As the evening came, their frantic attempts to awaken Baal ended in utter futility. No one responded. No one answered. No one paid attention.
It should be noted that Elijah was not merely sitting by during this time. Scripture indicates that he taunted the prophets of Baal and encouraged them to shout louder and made fun of the apathy and inactivity of their god. “Perhaps he is in deep thought,” he proposed, “or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”105 Elijah was determined to leave no ambiguity or uncertainty about who was the one true living God.
When the prophets of Baal conceded their failure, Elijah stepped up and called the people to come close to him. He went above and beyond the initial terms of the challenge. He dug a large trench around the altar and instructed the people to fill four large jars of water. He had them pour those jugs of water on the offering and the wood. Then he told them to do it again, and then he ordered them to do it a third time. They must have thought Elijah was out of his mind. Wasn’t it hard enough to pray fire down from heaven without having to water down the altar?
The altar was drenched with water running down, even filling the trench built around it. Then Elijah stepped forward and prayed. He asked God to make his presence known and to help his people turn their hearts back to him again. Without hesitation, without a lapse of any notable time, a fire fell from heaven; burned the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil; and also consumed all the water in the trench. When the people saw this, they fell to their faces and cried out, “The LORD—he is God! The LORD—he is God!”106
Even as observers, we revel in moments of great victory. When Brazil wins a World Cup, an entire nation dances in the streets. This was Elijah’s pinnacle moment. This was the Red Sox beating the Yankees, the Cavaliers beating the Warriors, the Eagles beating the Patriots. In moments like these, you feel invincible. The problem, of course, is that you are not.
After an experience like this, you would think that Elijah was untouchable, that his resilience was impenetrable, and that nothing could ever shake his faith or cause him to be discouraged or afraid. Yet surprisingly we find that the very opposite was the case. After this defining moment in Elijah’s life, in which the presence and power of God was undeniable, Elijah was actually most vulnerable to the frailness of his humanity. How did Elijah go from victoriously calling down fire from heaven to mourning and covering himself in ashes?
When Ahab and Jezebel heard what Elijah had done, Jezebel sent a message to Elijah to let him know that by the same time the next day, she would make certain that his life would come to an end.107 What I would expect from Elijah would be for him to send a message back to Jezebel, something like “Who do you think that you are? And who do you think I am?” After all, calling fire down from heaven should create a significant amount of self-confidence.
But instead, “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.”108 This seems to me an extreme response after su
ch an extraordinary victory—except when I look at my own life. So many times I have found myself most vulnerable after I had seemed most unstoppable. Those who see you from a distance will notice the battles you fight for them but not the ones you fight for yourself. Most wouldn’t have predicted that Elijah would be afraid and run. Although it is true that success breeds success and courage fuels courage, it is also equally true that every warrior of light has to fight against their own darkness.
It’s no small irony that in response to his fear, Elijah ran for his life. The truth is, he didn’t run for his life; he ran from his life. Unexpectedly, the last victory did not leave him with the strength for the next battle. This is one of the reasons it’s so important to celebrate every victory and make sure you take the time to replenish your strength. After all, the reward of winning a great battle is a greater battle. Sometimes this feels like more than we can bear.
There are moments even for the greatest of warriors in which we just don’t know if we have the strength to carry our weapons once more into battle. Sometimes the weapon is faith, at other times the weapon we need most is hope, and of course our most powerful weapon is love. When we are full of fear, faith can feel too heavy to lift. When we are drowning in despair, hope can feel more like self-delusion. If we allow hate to seep into our souls, love feels less like a weapon in our hands and more like an anchor around our neck. The warrior knows that their only weapons are faith, hope, and love. Only these will carry us through the battle. Only faith, hope, and love can give us the peace we seek and create the peace the world so desperately needs.
The Dark Side of Victory
I have tried to live a courageous life, even a heroic life. I have attempted wherever possible to make decisions that reflect my faith. But I can tell you that there have been many times when all I have wanted to do is run and hide. The paradox is that outside observers would have been certain I was having the time of my life. All they could see is one battle won after another. Just because someone’s life can be mapped through a series of great victories doesn’t mean they have been exempted from the struggles we all face from within.
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