So far, this was NOT going to plan… I’m frantically running around looking for ANY sign of cover in this unfamiliar setting, but every spot that seems to offer an oasis from this battle only hides MORE adversaries to contend with. Normally, I would rush in and dispatch them with ease, but this is not a good time for me to engage ANY enemy in battle, no matter how small they are… my shields are COMPLETELY gone, and I have almost NO health left. A mere punch or just one single bullet from even the lowest caliber enemy will result in my immediate demise. And to top this off, I can barely see through my visor or hear what is going on… my view is blurry and tinted with red, and the blaring alarm in my suit is a constant reminder that I am out of protection. Overwhelmed and outnumbered, the futility of my situation has started to set in… there isn’t anywhere to hide on this battlefield. Just twenty seconds of safety would give me the opportunity to heal, recharge, and strike back with full power… but my relentless enemy is not going to show me that mercy. The only choice that remains mine is to decide how and where do I want to face the inevitable… and what do I want my last stand to look like.   

While that story was from my own personal experience in Halo Reach, art imitates life so many times for me in this exact same way. As we absorb pain, it changes us in ways we would have never expected and pushes us into places where our previously planned behavior is altered. Whether that pain is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, it floods our thoughts and overrides our actions, driving us towards decisions we wouldn’t have made under a different set of circumstances. In my gaming experiences, as my character takes damage it affects the way I play… I find myself becoming more cautious, losing the boldness I previously felt when my health was full and my armor was intact. In many games, as we take damage our view is impacted… dark red coloring seeps into the sides of our viewing space, adding to our sense of panic. In some games, our character moves slower when they have taken too much damage, making it even HARDER to move forward. In these situations, our instincts tell us to retreat… but that may only give our opposition the ground that they wanted. And that quiet space we are seeking to regroup in may contain even more opposition, allowing them to trap us alone and in a defenseless state. It feels like a lose-lose situation… one we face in our real-world each and every day.

When we feel “pain” in the real world, our responses aren’t much different than our actions with our virtual world characters. We seek safety in the wrong places because we are desperately searching for any kind of relief, no matter how temporary it may be… but these short-term solutions typically conceal even greater dangers. We feel our view of the world narrow because the pain we are experiencing makes it hard to see straight… and the intensity of our pain blinds us to the bigger picture. As arrow after arrow from our enemy’s quiver strikes at our shield of faith, the previous boldness we felt when we started our journey slowly gets replaced with anxiousness and trepidation… and if we aren’t careful, the pain we feel from our adversary’s attacks can quickly shift us from taking ground to running for cover.

In the life of a follower of Christ, pain isn’t just predicted… it is PROMISED (John 16:33). And how we choose to deal with the pain we experience is one of the most important decisions any of us make… so let’s look to Someone who knows a little something about “pain”. And yes, I capitalized the word “Someone” for a reason.

Matthew 26:36-44 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Jesus fully understood the journey He was on… this wasn’t just a mere suicide mission, this path was going to be the very definition of “pain”. And as Christ considered the “bitter cup” that He would have to drink from if He was going to complete the final lap of His race, the enormity of it wore heavily on Him. And as He prayed for this cup to pass from Him while accepting that it would not, the truth is that temptation was about to present itself to Him one more time… a shortcut past the pain that mirrored the temptations He faced at the start of His earthly ministry.

Matthew 26:48-54 Now His betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him.” Immediately he went up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed Him. But Jesus said to him, “Friend, why have you come?” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and took Him. And suddenly, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?”

In the moment of His betrayal by Judas, Christ openly acknowledged His awareness that He could press “stop” on the proceedings right then… He could stop the pain before it even started. He could summon an unfathomable number of angelic forces and obliterate His opposition with a mere word… His head would never have to feel that cruel crown of thorns pressed into it, His flesh wouldn’t have to absorb the violent lashing from a Roman soldier’s whip, and His back would never have to carry a thorny cross up to His place of execution. But instead of allowing the promise of pain to distract Him from His destiny, He denied the temptation to bypass the suffering because it was the ONLY path to bring salvation to those He was sent here to save. But His temptation wasn’t over yet… the closer He got to the cross, the harder it would be to deny His flesh in service to His mission.

John 19:5-11 Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”  Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.” Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, and went again into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?” Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

After He was tortured and beaten, Christ stood before the physical representation of His judge, jury, and executioner… Pontius Pilate. And Pilate clearly did not want to execute Jesus, but Pilate’s attempts to prevent this fate would require Jesus to cooperate… or at least participate in His own defense strategy. But Jesus had no interest in simply suffering for our sins… He came to take our place and provide a sacrifice that would pay the price permanently. And that meant declining to take the path of least resistance, accept the pain, and take up His cross. And on that very cross, at the apex of His agony, He would face one last test.

Matthew 27:33-34 And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink.

While the interpretations of “gall” vary across Scripture, each time this refers to a bitter herb that when mixed with the sour wine would have a narcotic effect, dulling the most painful aspects of the crucifixion. Whether this was offered to make the execution more bearable for the prisoners who were doomed to die or for the executioners who had to observe this process through to completion is impossible to say… perhaps this small mercy was a little bit of both. But either way, one thing is for certain… Christ refused it, choosing not to even take the edge off of His pain when it was freely offered to Him. And while this was hard for me to understand, after taking all of these events together a pattern becomes clear… Christ denied the option to take ANY form of shortcuts around His pain as an example for each of us to follow through our own painful experiences in life. He chose to drink from the bitter cup when He could have embraced His divine supremacy, carry an undeserved cross when He could have asked for clemency, and take the full brunt of the suffering when He could have accepted mercy… all because completion of His mission required it. And if we are going to take up our crosses to follow Him, this is not just the recommended way… it is the ONLY way.

Continuing to complete our mission while we are pushing through our own pain is not easy, and it is not something we can do through our own strength alone. But just as we have found in our video game adventures, if we allow our pain to cause us to retreat, we give our enemy EXACTLY what they wanted… to silence our voice and stop our progress. As difficult as it can be to press on in the midst of our emotional heartache or physical suffering, our enemy typically intensifies their attacks the most when we are nearing the point of breakthrough… Christ did not feel the brutal scourging of His opposition and the full weight of His cross until He was a matter of days away from His greatest triumph. These trials that we face are meant to break our flesh as well as our spirit, so that the pain we are enduring will cause us to give up on both the Lord and His mission for us. But this is NOT a test from the Lord… it is an attack by an enemy that feels us encroaching on their territory and knows that we overcome him by a combination of the blood of the Lamb AND the word of our testimony.

Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

The Savior that we follow left a blood-stained path on the ground behind Him… evidence of a hard-fought battle won through pain and suffering as He absorbed the entire arsenal of His enemy’s attacks. He refused to be supernaturally saved by angels, physically rescued by humans, and even denied Himself any form of anesthesia in the process… all so He could relate to every part of the battles that each of us will face as we follow in His footsteps (Hebrews 4:15). He took the devil’s best shot and still accomplished His mission… and He has warned all who will follow Him to prepare for similar treatment from the enemy of our souls.

Just as Noble Six and the rest of Noble team faced insurmountable odds and ultimately gave their lives during the events of Halo Reach, I find that my own battles in life contain some pretty similar challenges and raise many of the same questions… will we stand tall in the face of our own individual pain and adversity, even if our mission didn’t include a plan for our own extraction from it? Will we keep fighting this battle, even if it feels like we are outnumbered and overwhelmed… all so a greater and more permanent victory will be achieved? Will we take the unearned stripes, accept undeserved pain, and still joyfully proclaim, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15)?  In the midst of our anguish, will we rise above our own hurt to accomplish our mission? With our final ounce of strength will we light just one more candle in the face of this present darkness and shout “Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4)? Will we burn our lives, push through the tears, press past our fears, and finish the fight… all for a sunrise that we may never get to see?

The pain we each feel in life is REAL, and each of us contend with different forms of it in our pursuit of Christ. But our mission is too important to leave unfinished, even if it calls for our literal blood, sweat, and tears to accomplish it. The devil will take his best shot at silencing us and denying us our primary weapon against his kingdom… the word of our testimony. If we retreat because our pain has overwhelmed us, our enemy steals back the ground that we have previously conquered. If we lose our boldness and courage because we are afraid of taking one more hit, we will allow them to accomplish the very outcome they were seeking. And if we search for comfort, protection, and reassurance in the wrong places, we will fall right into their carefully laid trap. Our pursuit of Christ will take us down roads that we wouldn’t have chosen on our own (John 21:18-19), and our enemy will absolutely use our pain as well as the threat of suffering to tempt us into taking a detour away from following the Lord’s footprints. There is no victory to be found in a crown free from thorns and a cross that cost nothing to carry… it was His willingness to carry on in spite of the pain that led to the freedom we enjoy. And as His followers, the meaning of “taking up our cross” truly becomes clear… we must be prepared to do the same (Matthew 16:24-25). To serve the Father’s will from our place of very real pain and overcome our enemy through a combination of Christ’s blood-stained cross and our tear-stained testimony… so let’s suit up, fellow Spartans. These crosses aren’t going to carry themselves. The intensity level of our pain is proof that our enemy is giving us their very best shot… let’s return the favor.

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