Sell Your Coat and Buy a Sword

The time is coming.

Gather your goods.

Sell your coat

And buy a sword.

Be ready for testing.

 

Countries severing ties.
Dictators threatening.

Reactors exploding.

Forest fires ravaging.
Riots wrecking.
Temperatures soaring.
Disease claiming lives.

The time is coming. Be ready.

Stockpile your pantry.
Put essentials in a backpack.

Sell your coat and buy a sword.
But most importantly,
Do not fall asleep on your watch.

The devil has asked to sort you
Amidst the wrath and cowardliness

Your friends will publicly display,

While one of your own sells out
And intellectuals crucify Christ.

What can you do but draw your sword
And wound those who threaten you
And your ideas of Heaven on earth?
What can you do but hide in your upper room
Until the threat is past?

You sold your coat and bought a sword.

But it wasn't enough

Because you fell asleep, 

Lulled by easy living.

Constant acquisition and the screen's diversions

Took the edge off your deepest yearnings.

Thus, when Christ said sword,

You thought, "Power the world would respect."

Did he not mean the only weapon 

That will stand this testing,

This invisible fight?

The war has begun.

These earthly disasters
Are merely the upper crust

Of the unseen world grappling for souls,

For your soul.

Will you sell your comfortable coat

For the sake of buying the Sword of the Spirit?

Will you fill your mind's storehouses

With words from God's own mouth?

Will you daily pack your bag

With only the bare essentials:

His power, his love, and his truth?

And above all, will you ceaselessly pray

That you will not give in to gritting your teeth

And trying it alone, but rather

That you will fall upon your Savior

To defend you and uphold you and empower you

Until the day you meet face to face?

"Be Thou my Breastplate, my Sword for the fight;

Be Thou my whole Armor, be Thou my true Might;

Thou my soul’s Shelter, be Thou my strong Tow'r:

O raise Thou me heav'nward, great Pow'r, of my pow'r. "

-Be Thou My Vision (1912 Translation by Eleanor Hull Verse 3)