Reading I Chronicles 12:23-38, the phrases “ready armed to the war,” “mighty men of valour,” and “such as went forth to battle, expert in war, with all instruments of war, fifty thousand, which could keep rank; they were not of double heart,” stood out to me.  The idea of “keeping rank” particularly arrested my attention as I was impressed that these men had a “mind to war”; in other words, they had a “heart to fight.”

A heart to fight is necessary to “keep rank” while working in corrections, and it’s important that each one of us have such a heart as we stand beside each other.  You can be taught how to fight, becoming familiar with all the moves, but if you don’t have the heart to fight you will not put them into action, endangering yourself and others. Circumstances arise where we have to engage physically, and they are increasing more and more.  In our position, we do well to be prepared to fight all the time. Yet more than this, we must be prepared to fight a host of different temptations, like anger, anxiety and depression, that attack us at times when we least expect it.

Those dreadful threatening emotional encounters are real battles which are just as demanding and even sometimes more draining and harder to recover from than a physical encounter.  Fighting these formidable foes and winning will be a spiritual battle that begins with a realization of who God is and what He has done for us. He is real. Christ was tempted in every manner.  He was wounded for our transgressions. He suffered for us. He will never leave us. These thoughts help us be armed and ready for internal war.

God can give you a heart to fight.  Understand, His gifts and callings are without  repentance. The weariness of the battle, bitterness, or apathy may have tempted you to lay it down temporarily. Psalm 119: 28 “My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.”  Ask God for renewal and strength to reclaim your heart to fight.

Have you ever been in the position where you handled a situation and you executed some moves you weren’t really trained in by a human hand? You’d never done anything like that before, but found that right there, in the midst of the battle, “God taught your hands to war and fingers to fight.” During the aftermath, there is a sense of utter amazement.  It may have been in a time where a situation was prevented from escalating or was de-escalated, yet you can’t even comprehend how or why the words that were spoken produced the desired effect.

God teaches us how to fight the battles we take home with us such as depression, anger, and despair that have the potential to leave the greatest scars. A heart to fight is necessary to defeat the intrusive thoughts, nightmares, unexpected triggers, degrading experiences, and horrific images. There are places that incidents, may take us emotionally, into battles we never fought before, but God is there to teach us then also how to surmount those unpredictable oppressive opponents.

As times continue to change in corrections work, our heart to fight must be enlarged to encompass the increased battles that are brought on by the new nature of corrections we face today.  Other officers are counting on you to have a heart to fight, and so are your families back home.