Military Outreach: Sharing the Gospel with Veterans

Military Outreach: Sharing the Gospel with Veterans

Profound suffering (trauma) is not a military member only club as we shall see. This being said, many military personnel are well acquainted with suffering and due to a lack of training, they are taking their own lives!

You can help them!!!

Right here, and right now!

 If you have known great pain (military or civilian), your comments could give your great pain, great purpose.

Our unique and often painful life experiences can be used by God, that we might know the Gospel and the love of Christ for us more fully and personally! With great pain, God can bring great purpose, when we learn how to run to the Gospel with our pain. With your permission, I would like to show you how this is practically possible and how to practice a proven way of engaging with pain.

Training, like many of us received from the military, teaches us to ask the most important questions and give the most needed information in response to those questions. You may be familiar with asking for an ACE report. This ACE acronym teaches us to ask for the right information. What is the current situation of your troops regarding their Ammo, Causalities, and Equipment. 

Similarly, the SALUTE report taught us to give the most important information to our leaders when enemy troops were spotted in our AO (area of operations). Size, Activity, Location, Unit identification, Time, and Equipment. This was how we were taught to organize the needed information about a newly discovered enemy force.

When the bullets started “popping” as they made contact with your surroundings, we instinctively called out the “D’s” that we had drilled into our thinking for just such a moment. Direction of fire, Distance to the enemy force, etc…

These acronyms trained us to ask the best questions and give the most needed responses while under pressure on the battlefield with bullets flying. 

Let me give you a new and simple acronym to use, when you are facing the pain and pressures associated with the human experiences that are filled with sinful people, who make sinful choices that send bullets of pain ripping into your life. Let me use my training as a Biblical Counselor to help you on the battlefield of domestic life as well as the combat zones you are called into. Let me help you go to the cross of Jesus with your pain by asking the right question and focusing on the right details. 

CROSS,

Consider the Cross if Christ and His life.

Relate to His pain in your pain.

Observe His pain On your behalf.

Savor the knowing of Him in this special and painful way. 

Say you need His help and Say to others how He loves you.

Most of the time we have not learned to ask the right question. We ask, "How can God love me in the midst of all this pain?" The better question is, "What are God's good purposes in allowing pain? And Why would God put Himself through this type of pain on purpose?"

That’s right, God imagined the Cross and all its horrors before He created anything that exists (Revelation 13:8). Was God’s most beautiful way of demonstrating the nature and quality of His love to bring about the cross of Jesus with all its horrors? Yes!

The Cross of Christ that reveals the nature and quality of God's love for us, moves pain from pointless to purposeful and without the cross, all pain has little purpose. God could have organized the universe in any way He wanted. Why then did He allow so much pain in what He created? There are many good answers to this question but let me stick with the one at hand and leave the rest for now. God demonstrates the quality of His love for us by putting His Son through the same pain you are feeling right now and so much more pain! Jesus experienced every persons unique pain all in one short life. 

Have you ever thought about how God organized the life of Jesus so that every human pain can be seen in the life of Jesus and His Cross? Have you been adopted as a child and feel the pain of this in your life, daily, so was Jesus, He felt this way too. In God’s perfect plan, Joseph is not the biological parent of Jesus (Matthew 1:24-25).

Are you lonely and longing for intimate companionship, so was Jesus in His humanity while walking the same earthly wildernesses and being peppered with Satanic assaults in His mind (Matthew 4 and Luke 4).

Have you lost a child and feel this pain every single day, so has God, and He organized the events of human history so that He might feel our pain for Himself, before we felt it. One of the reasons He allows pain to exist in the world is so that we might know the quality of His love for us and walk in relationship with Him (Matthew 3:17 and Romans 8:32).

Do you have as spouse who has been unfaithful to you, and you feel betrayed (as you should), so has Jesus (John 13:2). 

Maybe, like me you have experience all of these to some degree or another; betrayal of the closest and most intimate kind, loss of a children who has died or rejected you completely, loneliness and longing for friendship that lasted months, parents that abandoned you, and the list could go on and on as we share our painful lives around the campfires of life.

God so orchestrated the events recorded in the Bible, so that we can relate to the pain He went through, first. He put Himself through the pains we would feel and He lead the way in doing it not only first but to the greatest degree. We can know Him in our pain. The Apostle Paul endured severe pain and some of that pain is detailed in the Bible (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). How did he endure such a list of painful experiences? It seems like being rejected by people and having them stone you with rocks (not weed) would end your ministry career immediately and for good. Paul tells us how he endured the pain of not only rejections, stonings, beatings, imprisonments, but so much more, again and again. 

He took his pain to the Cross of Christ.

CROSS,

Consider the Cross if Christ and His life.

Relate to His pain in your pain.

Observe His pain On your behalf.

Savor the knowing of Him in this special and painful way. 

Say you need His help and Say to others how He loves you.

Here is what the Apostle Paul says to us about how he dealt with pain. I pray you see our CROSS acronym in his words! 

"But whatever things were gain to me (Paul), those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things (in this life) to be loss (garbage), in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the rigorousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain the resurrection from the dead;" – Philippians 3:7-11

We can see in Paul’s own words, how he related to Christ in his pain and made the pain of life purposeful. Let’s take a look now, at another, more recent sufferer’s experience.

Joni Erickson Tada was paralyzed from the neck down in a swimming accident in her teen years. In her book, “Joni An Unforgettable Story,” she talks candidly about the years where she asked family members to help her end her own life. Here is how she used our CROSS technique to give her great pain, great purpose and turn the corner from suicide to a life of beautiful purpose that now teaches us to turn that same corner in that same way and find purpose.

On pages 91-92 of her book she says,

“The Scriptures were encouraging, and I applied the reality and truth of them to my own special needs. During these difficult midnight hours, I’d visualize Jesus standing beside my Stryker. I imagined Him as a strong, comforting person with a deep, reassuring voice, saying specifically to me, ‘Lo I am with you always. If I loved you enough to die for you, don’t you think I know best how to run your life, even if it means you being paralyzed?’

This reality of the Scripture was, that He was with me now. Beside me in my own room! That was the comfort I needed.

I discovered that the Lord Jesus Christ could indeed empathize with my situation. On the cross for those agonizing, horrible hours, waiting for death, He was immobilized, helpless, paralyzed. Jesus did know what it was like not to be able to move – not to be able to scratch your nose, shift your weight, wipe your eyes. He was paralyzed on the cross. He could not move His arms or legs. Christ knew exactly how I felt (Joni).”

Like the Apostle Paul, Joni learned to Savor the love of God for her in the painful experiences that Christ suffered on her behalf. Because of her painful life experiences, of being paralyzed, she knows Christ in ways that most of us cannot. Because of your painful life experiences, you can know Christ in ways that others may not. You can know Him personally and intimately in your pain, that He knows so well!

No one exactly knows your unique pain like He does. But you must choose to run to the CROSS of Christ with your pain so that your great pain will have great purpose in knowing the Son of God who endured such pain on your behalf. Let the bullets of pain that make contact with you during your day be reminders of His love for you. Memorize the CROSS acronym and every time you feel the pain of your loss, turn your mind to His knowing of your pain. Turn your mind to His love for you that endured the same type of and more pain on purpose, for you! Like Jonie and Paul, saturate your thinking with the image of the Cross of Christ who wants you to know Him as He knows you. Follow the examples of Paul, Joni and countless others who find great comfort in the Person of Jesus, who loves them and grants them the fellowship of His sufferings.

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we might receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” – Hebrews 4:14-16

If you don't know the historical life of Jesus, I suggest you take a few hours and read the Gospel of John and read for the purpose of knowing His person and experiences. Read to know His pain. Read to know His love for you. Read to find purpoes for His pain and then yours. Read to bring the light of His Person into your life experiences.

We often use four letter words in response to pain. Here is a better four letter word for pain.

When this technique helps you navigate your pain, circle back to us, please! Share your personal pain, CROSS navigation story in the comments of this post and give great CROSS magnifying purpose to your pain in helping the next reader know Christ! Or write us an email, give us permission to share and tell us how this CROSS technique helps you navigate your specific pain.

We can post your story using only your initials.

Right now, you can do something about the suicide rate in America and among the veteran / military communities. Military or not, you can add your unique voice to the choir saying, “turn to Jesus with your pain.” More than monthly financially support for this operation or buying our T-shirt, you can give the next readers your testimony and your daily prayers! By sharing your life, you can join us, as we share the comfort God has given us with those in need of comfort. Help us help them by taking Jesus to them with us right now, in real practical ways, with real stories about real pain, and a very real Savior!

Tada, Joni Erickson, Joni An Unforgetable Story, Zondervan Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1996, pp 92-92

All Scripture NASB95, The Lockman Foundation, 1995