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Soldiers
Hiya, Folks! Best of health and prosperity to you this morning – and all the blessings of the Lord on top of it!
Hey, that works for a greeting! I like that! Think I’ll use that again.
Anyway, we’re still on our break from the topic of prosperity.
There are some critical principles involved in true prosperity, and I don’t want to just brush over them so lightly you miss what I’m getting at.
I was about to post part two on that subject today and realized I’d missed a few things.
Figured I’d hold it a bit longer so I could get it right when we resume that discussion.
Bones has a great phrase he uses when he ends his daily conversations, “Ya got another chance to get ‘er right.” (Or something like that.) Seein’s how I don’t want to mislead you on this principle, I figgered I’d save it for another day – mebbe tomorrow.
We’ll see. Hehehehehe……..
Let’s talk about something entirely different today: soldiers.
On December 5th, 1960, I signed up to join the Alaska National Guard.
The draft was in effect back in those days, and I didn’t want my well-planned life (haw haw haw!) to be interrupted by a sudden and unexpected call to military service.
I thought….
Ooops! Almost forgot. Coffee’s ready! Got to pour mine.
Grab your cup. I’m having some Sumatran coffee this morning.
That stuff’ll put hair on your chest!
Ready?
Anyway, like I was saying, I joined the Alaska National Guard.
I thought I’d get my six months of active service in, then do a couple of meetings every month for the next two and a half years, and be done with it.
Soldiering wasn’t part of my plans. At least I didn’t think it was.
Little did I know! See, in my youthful naiveté, I thought being a soldier meant carrying a gun and shooting at other people with guns that were aimed at you.
Get the other guy before he gets you kind of mentality.
Brother! Did I ever have it wrong!
Shortly after signing up, I was shipped to Fort Ord in California to get my basic training out of the way.
Assigned to Company B, 5th Battalion, 1st Infantry (B-5-1, we called it), my MOS (military occupation specialty) was 111: light infantry soldier.
Great. Just what I was afraid of.
I met a couple of guys in Basic, however, whose lives and attitudes really started change in my thinking about soldiering.
One of them was a pharmacist from Fresno by the name of Monte Byrd.
He didn’t fit the traditional mold of a soldier – at least my idea of the traditional mold.
Monte became my best friend in the Army. Somehow, we hit it off together.
Bunking next to each other didn’t hurt, either. His attitude was, “I’ve been called, and I’m going to serve my country and, by George, I’m going to be the best.”
Wow! It kind of put my attitude to shame. I was there, cowardly-like, trying to get through it as quick as possible, and get out as quick as possible.
Serving my country wasn’t even part of my thinking.
Although it took awhile for Monte’s mindset to catch hold in me, his attitude helped to reshape my thinking about soldiering.
Don’t think I ever had a chance to say, Thanks, Monte, for the part you played in how I fought in later years.
Anyway, Monte, if you read this, THANKS!
For more than 40 years, we’ve remained friends. Monte isn’t a pharmacist anymore.
He’s a prison chaplain. Guess I played a part in his life, too.
Then there was Frank Bihari. Wish I knew what ever happened to him.
We bunked next to each other, too. We were the three musketeers: Frank, Monte and Regner.
We did just about everything together. Hohohohoho…. Riiiight!!
Frank was a different kind of guy, though. He was a Hungarian refugee who had fled Hungary in 1957 during the communist revolution.
Swimming across an icy Danube and escaping into Czechoslovakia, and then into Austria, Frank eventually made his way to the United States where he determined to become an American citizen.
When he learned that he could join the United States Army even before he became a U.S. citizen, he did so.
Frank always talked about getting his army training and learning to become a real soldier.
We got into lots of discussions about what his idea of a real soldier was.
Talk about a guy who was focused! Frank had one thought in mind: Get trained, get back to Hungary, and help free family and country from the communist enslavement.
He was deadly serious. Frank understood soldiering.
He understood what it was to put his life on the line in order to bring freedom and liberty for his family.
He knew the stakes. If it cost him his life, so be it, but he was going to ensure that his family and friends were free.
Real soldiers understand the price of freedom. Freedom isn’t free.
Those who waste their freedom on attacking our liberties have never had to put their life on the line for anything.
They are – in short – cowards! They gladly attack our way of life, but aren’t willing to sacrifice theirs for the freedoms we enjoy.
Brother! How my attitudes towards soldiering have changed throughout the years.
I owe a lot of those changes to Monte and Frank. In the summer of 1961, most of Company B shipped out.
The Laotian crisis was developing, and there was a fracas in Berlin that needed our attention.
Monte and Frank both shipped out. I got left behind with a last-minute change of orders and MOS: no doubt the result of idiotic things I’d said to my First Sergeant and the company Commander about not shooting at folks.
They didn’t need someone on the front lines who was afraid to shoot, and I looked like that kind of person to them.
Maybe I was…..then, anyway!
Frank disappeared. I never found out whether he made it back to Hungary or not.
If any of you folks know anything about Frank Bihari, let me know.
I owe him! Monte and I have talked about him periodically.
Like I said, my MOS was changed: to 630. That was a carburetor and ignition specialist.
I got shipped instead to the middle of the Mojave Desert to work on tanks, jeeps, alligators (the mechanical kind), ducks (also the mechanical kind) and 6X6’s.
Camp Roberts. Wheww!! Talk about being in hell!
They had a heat wave that summer – if you can imagine such a thing in the desert.
135 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Right. What shade?
The medics measured 186 degrees on the parade ground.
The company commander called for drills on the parade grounds one day and more than 200 guys collapsed in the heat.
The shop where I worked fixing carburetors and ignition systems cooled all the way down to 117 degrees.
For a lifetime Alaskan, that was hell! I weighed 215 or 220 when I joined the Army.
When I finally shipped out of Camp Roberts, my weight was 168 pounds.
They sent me back to Alaska in the fall of 1961. I thought I was heading back to Point Hope, where I had signed up, and where Dad was getting ready to build a new church building.
Not so fast! When I arrived at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, someone decided they needed me in Army Intelligence.
OK. No smart cracks from you wise guys! I know all about oxymorons.
Eventually, they did ship me back to Point Hope where I was assigned to demolitions training with the 7th Special Forces who were there on maneuvers.
Go figure. Demolitions training blowing up icebergs.
There’s one for you!
After a break of two or three months or so to help Dad get the new church building enclosed, I was notified that I had received a security clearance and my application to work for NASA had been approved.
That didn’t mean I was suddenly free of the Army. They changed my status to “Regular Army” (RA) and shipped me to San Jose to be assigned to a reserve unit where I had to report on a regular basis.
So now, instead of shooting at people, I was shooting at the moon.
Literally. But I was still in the Army.
After two and a half years of ups and downs in the Army, they released me so that I could enroll at Bethany Bible College.
My plan had always been the ministry, but the Army was in the way.
At least that was how I had seen it in those early days.
I stayed on at Lockheed continuing with the R & D for NASA, but changed my work shift from days to graveyard.
It just about was, too! Graveyard, I mean. But we’ll save that for some other time.
Something was birthed in my spirit during those Army days – well, maybe not birthed, but certainly grown into something more than the baby concepts I’d had when I first signed up to join the Army: Soldiers.
OK. Laugh. That’s what you’re supposed to be when you’re in the Army.
I didn’t know the first thing about soldiering when I first signed up.
I was one buck private coward. Maturing has a way of taking its toll on cowardliness, though.
You begin to find out there are some things worth fighting for.
There are some things worth dying for. Life and liberty aren’t free.
What I was learning in the natural realm started to become a reality in the spiritual realm.
The lessons being learned holding an M-1 started to make sense.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Put on God’s whole armor – the armor of a heavy-armed soldier, which God supplies – that you may be able successfully to stand up against all the strategies and the deceits of the devil. For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood – contending only with physical opponents – but against the despotisms, against the powers, against the master spirits who are the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere.” (Ephesians 6:11-12 Amplified)
Like it or not, all of us are at war. I’m not talking about Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea or any place like that.
Those wars have a beginning, they are fought, and they have an end.
The kind of war I’m talking about takes place in the spirit realm.
There is nothing that happens in the natural realm that doesn’t first happen in the spirit realm.
If you want to win – really win – a war in the natural realm, you’d best be fighting it at its source instead of its periphery.
Wars in the spirit are wars between evil princes – master spirits (demonic rulers) – and us.
We are the ground for those wars. We are the objective, the territory that Satan wants dominion over.
I hadn’t been away from military service very long when I first began to be aware that warfare was ongoing….and I don’t mean in Laos or Vietnam.
There were wars and battles being fought in and over my spirit for dominion and control of me.
The fact that I was a born-again, spirit-baptized Christian made me all the more the target of an Enemy who was afraid of the damage I could do to his rulership and wicked influence and control over the lives of people.
You know how he began to target me? With Fear.
The Fear of Evil. The Fear of Man. The Fear of Death.
The three families of fear that target people in battles – more often guerilla warfare – in their spirits, their souls, and their flesh.
The problem was that I didn’t realize at first who and what my enemies were.
You can’t fight an enemy you don’t know exists. You can’t fight an enemy you can’t see.
Most of all, you can’t fight an enemy unless you are equipped with the kinds of weapons of warfare with which he can be defeated.
You can’t fight an enemy whose weaknesses you don’t know.
In Basic Training, we had classes on military strategy.
We had an instructor who had learned his military strategy in the Korean War during the early 1950’s.
He had lots to say about learning the enemy’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
That instructor had learned firsthand. He had been there.
He had fought battles. And he knew what it took to finally win the war.
The apostle Paul’s instructions couldn’t be clearer.
Just as my Army instructor made clear, you don’t go to war and fight battles in the realm of the spirit without first being properly and fully equipped.
You’d best know your enemy, too.
Spiritual warfare is not for the fainthearted. Unfortunately, it seems like a whole lot of Christians don’t have a clue about engaging in spiritual warfare.
They don’t seem to realize that – like it or not – they are at war themselves!
Many of them are already casualties of a war they’ve never engaged in.
They’ve never become soldiers and taken up arms against a spiritual enemy.
One of the most ridiculous doctrines (now I’m gonna meddle a bit!) I’ve ever heard taught in churches is that once you become a Christian, you can’t be afflicted or tormented by demonic forces.
How idiotic can you get? That’s when you really
begin to be targeted by the enemy. If you aren’t walking with the Lord Jesus Christ, you’re no threat to Satan!
He couldn’t give a rip what happens to you. Why should he waste time tormenting you when you’re already down and out?
Of course, that’s an overgeneralization. There are lots of folks running around who neither know the Lord, nor pay Him any attention, who are tormented and afflicted spiritually.
What I’m getting at is that once you become a committed Christian, you’d better sit up and take notice that Satan is going to target you.
We’ll talk more about soldiers and soldiering in the days to come.
I’ll share with you my battles with fear, and the processes the Lord took me through to overcome the spirits of fear.
I’ll share with you how I learned to be a real soldier, how I learned to fight – and win!
Don’t have time today to go there, but let me leave you with this to consider.
Soldiers – in the natural realm – are soldiers (OK, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, etc.) who are committed – and led by experienced commanders – to fighting battles in order to achieve and maintain our freedom and the liberties we cherish as Americans.
Soldiers – in the spirit realm – are folks who have taken on specially prepared spiritual armor and have been equipped to fight battles for the freeing of the souls of men and women.
Soldiers who fight in the spirit know what it is to dethrone world rulers of darkness, what it is to take on an enemy whose arrogance traps him every time. Soldiers who fight spiritual battles know Satan’s vulnerabilities.
They know exactly how to target demonic forces and take them out.
We’ll talk about those kinds of soldiers in another coffee break.
Well! I did it again. I got so busy talking and sharing there, I let my coffee get cold.
Gotta go reheat it. I don’t like microwaved coffee.
Yucckkkk! Might have to make another pot.
You all can finish your coffee. Hopefully, you didn’t let your cup get cold.
Blessings on you!
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657
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