Testudo Warfare

I never knew spiritual opposition until I was in full time ministry; or at least not to the level my wife and I would become familiar with.

Of course I had faced it before, every Christian serving the Lord is opposed.

Bob Groeneman trained me how to pray.  He was my youth pastor who continued to pastor me until he went to be with the Lord.

We would pray leading up to camp and missions trips and see all kinds of warfare.  Every time we had victory, it felt wonderful- I thought, this must be what ministry feels like all the time!

Then, I went from being a volunteer to being in charge and entered the school of getting the crap kicked out of you.

I would call home and talk to my pastor, he would affirm that this came with the territory.

I thought ministry would be praying for people, then they would hug you and we would go out for pizza.  It felt the opposite.

I didn’t realize my leaders had taken the brunt of violence leveled at us as we ministered; now we would experience it ourselves.

My wife and I learned in that season to pray and not give up, even though our senses were begging us to give up.

In the first two years of ministry we would learn a tactic that has continued to come into play whenever necessary: TESTUDO.

You don’t have to be in full time vocational ministry to be opposed by the enemy; you do have to be dangerous to what he is guarding.

If you are on mission you can expect bizarre things to happen, especially as you get close to the thing God put you on mission for.

In the second year of ministry my wife and I had built a small group of students- it didn’t look impressive but it took everything we had.

We had an opportunity to fly the group from Wisconsin to Colorado and bring them to the camp we had grown up going to.

We knew God was in it as doors opened up, and favor we hadn’t had before came to us.

Then the opposition came, it lasted for 3 months.  

Every car we used failed, our appliances would break unexpectedly, random health challenges popped up.

I developed cold sores on my eyes and couldn’t wear contacts- rendering me blind. 

I called Pastor Bob when I was weary, so nearly every day.  As I told him about my plight he explained something that has stuck with me since.

“God has unlimited resource.  The devil doesn’t.  You need to hunker down into God, keep moving forward, and wait out the enemy’s barrage.”

He would go on to explain how the Romans had a tactic called testudo, or tortoise warfare.

When there was immense attack by archers, the platoon would gather together and make a shell by ducking under their shields.

Those arrows could only keep flying for so long, eventually they could run again.  

In the moments of attack they might not make up as much ground, but they could stay safe together.

How this translated to spiritual warfare made total sense to me- my wife and I learned how to engage on a new level at this time.

We would hunker down into God, reading and reciting the likes of Psalm 91.

We would raise our faith and belief in God as circumstances would threaten discouragement, speaking it out loud when we felt the barrage.

We would pray together more, creating a tighter unity between the two of us.

It felt like crawling some days, but we continued to serve faithfully.

The opposition for us ended right before we took our group to Colorado.  

That trip became the absolute highlight of the ministry in Wisconsin, so many changed lives.

I remember bawling and telling the Lord that it was all worth it.

There have been many more seasons since then that have called for testudo. 

You know you’re upsetting the enemy when all your stuff breaks, strife comes out of nowhere, people oppose you for seemingly no reason.

The enemy can use a bunch of tactics, sometimes it feels overwhelming when it hits all at once.

Take courage knowing the enemy’s source is limited, but you serve an unlimited God.

When you breakthrough the enemy’s line onto the Lord’s victory, you will say it was worth it.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.