Victory through Perseverance

Deep in the mountains of south-central Afghanistan, nestled in a valley through which the Helmand River flows, you will find the town of Sangin.

The town is small and unassuming, with 14,000 residents, mostly of Pashtun descent.  It is a marketplace centre for the region and appears very similar to the other small towns that dot the Afghan countryside.

Yet during the war in Afghanistan, it was the centre of some of the fiercest fighting of the entire conflict.

This town, for all its humble appearances, lays on some of the most fertile farmland in the country, and because of that, has been a centre of opium growth and distribution for decades.  The oppressive Taliban regime was well-established in the town, and used the income that came in from the drug trade to fund their armed activities.

As the Coalition forces began securing the country and pushing the Taliban out of the towns, Sangin would become a fiercely contested area, due to the insurgents desperately wanting to protect their poppy fields.  A UN convoy was attacked by enemy soldiers as it passed through the town, and Coalition troops who came to escort the trucks through also came under fire.  Because of this, the decision was made to station troops permanently in the town, and to use it to establish a military base for the region.

In June of 2006, a company of British soldiers took up their permanent position in Sangin, after Taliban raids had recently killed 59 civilians in the town.  For a few days, all was quiet, as the troops fortified their positions and established their new base.

This quiet would soon cease.

The enemy began launching violent raids against the town daily, often attacking five or six times in one day.  They slowly encircled the town, eventually taking control of all roads leading in and out of Sangin, and surrounded the area outside the town with land mines, IED’s, snipers, and ambush positions.  British helicopters had difficulty flying into the town due to rocket fire from the hidden Taliban fighters, and so relief and resupply was sporadic and unreliable.  For all intents and purposes, the town of Sangin was completely cut off from help and under siege, with the British troops vastly outnumbered and outgunned.

The standoff would last for nine months. Every day, Taliban raiders would throw themselves at the town, pouring machine-gun fire and rocket attacks against the British fortifications.  Every time, the British pushed them back.  Mortar rounds launched from the fields well outside the walls fell into the centre of the town throughout the day and night, and the sounds of guns, bombs, and the cries of the wounded was constant.  Fighting was almost completely continuous for the duration of the conflict, and several NATO efforts at relieving the town would fail.

Finally, after months of bloodshed, the Coalition forces made Sangin their top priority, and launched a massive assault against the Taliban positions in the area.  Helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, warplane strikes, laser-guided missiles, and hundreds of troops came ferociously against the enemy, and finally broke their chokehold on the town.  The exhausted British soldiers who had singlehandedly endured months of constant, viscous assaults were relieved.  With Sangin freed from its siege, the town was able to become a Coalition stronghold, and has been used as a launching point for action against the enemy ever since.

When you are under siege, morale becomes as much a threat as the enemy you are fighting.  Often, when we are feeling like we are overwhelmed by our circumstances, part of the struggle is with our attitude, as we feel like we are losing.  The nature of the daily battle is that we fight and fight and don’t seem to get anywhere.  Nothing seems to change, and our condition seems to be consistently difficult.  Just as the British soldiers must have felt, we get exhausted from dealing with the same thing all the time, and wonder why we can’t seem to win a victory over our ordeal.

But when we’re hard-pressed on every side by our circumstances, the definition of “victory” changes.  The besieged soldiers weren’t expected to be out destroying enemy strongholds; they were simply expected to hold their ground.  Every time the outnumbered, beleaguered soldiers pushed the enemy back, they were accomplishing an incredible feat.  They didn’t need to be out doing amazing exploits to become heroes.  Standing strong in the middle of the chaos was more than enough.

One time in Scripture, and only one, we see Jesus come as close to full out despair as we ever see Him.  His circumstances became overwhelming, His flesh was struggling with obeying God, and for all intents and purposes, He hit the wall.  Emotionally and spiritually drained, He was at the lowest point of His life.

That night, the night before His death, we find Him in the garden of Gethsemane.  Judas has left to bring His enemies to Him, and the sequence of events has been launched that will ultimately end in His betrayal, abandonment, arrest, abuse, and horrifying death.  The weight of this terrible reality is crushing Him.

He says to His followers, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me,” (Mt 26:38).  He walks off into the darkness, alone, and falls with His face to the ground.  With loud cries and tears, He calls upon His Father (Heb 5:7).  He prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me,” (Mt 26:39).   He asks if there is any other way, any way that this trial can pass Him by, any way that He can avoid the terrible fate that awaits Him.  But even in His heartbreaking state, He refuses anything but obedience to what His Father wants: “Yet not as I will, but as you will,” (ibid).

One can only imagine the intensity of what He was feeling that night.  Scripture says that “being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground,” (Lk 22:44). The strain was so intense that His body was showing the effects of it.  He was literally carrying the weight of the whole world on His shoulders.

What makes this evening even more remarkable is that it had actually begun days earlier.  The Word tells us that “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem,” (Lk 9:51).

When Jesus knew that the horror of the cross was drawing close, He didn’t hesitate or pull away from the trial.  He actually turned into it, and walked with purpose straight into the hardship.

A couple of other interpretations of this verse from Luke help to paint an amazing picture:

“When it came close to the time for his Ascension, he gathered up his courage and steeled himself for the journey to Jerusalem.” (MSG)

“Now when the time was almost come for Jesus to be received up [to heaven], He steadfastly and determinedly set His face to go to Jerusalem.”  (AMP)

The image created is one of a man who knows what is in store for Him, who knows that it will be unbelievably and unbearably difficult, but who knows that He must go through this pain nonetheless.  He doesn’t falter, but draws upon every ounce of strength and courage within Him, and turns His eyes towards His death, and determinedly walks right into it.

And how did He get through it all, exactly?

Scripture gives us the answer, as it so often does.  It tells us to keep our eyes locked on Jesus, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God,” (Heb 12:2).

And there it is!  That’s how He got through it.  He saw the joy set before Him.  He saw the souls that would find freedom because of the cross.  He saw eternity in Heaven with those who would trust in Him.  He saw an end to sin and death forever, a crushing of the Enemy under His feet, and a people whose chains would be broken because of His sacrifice.  He saw hope coming to His children who He loved.  And He saw a reunion with His Father in Heaven, where He would take His rightful seat at the right hand of God and rule over a Creation that was being redeemed for all time because of His sacrifice.

He knew that the brief season of pain would be terrible, but it would be over.  And afterwards, the good things that the trial would release would be more than worth the cost.  Of His death, He would tell His disciples that it was like a woman going through the agony of childbirth, “but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world,” (Jn 16:21).

Scripture understands that the seasons of hardship are painful, but that they bring great reward for those who can hold on through them.  The Apostle Paul wrote, “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us…” (Rom 5:3-4). The nature of suffering is that we are given two options: we can press through it, or we can choose not to, and instead fall into self-pity and despair.  The Son of God chose not to wallow in His ordeal; He chose to meet it head-on, and face what was ordained for Him.  In so doing, He made it through victorious, and set the example for the rest of us.

As He walked the road from Gethsemane to Jerusalem, facing certain doom, Jesus performed no miracles, did no teaching, and encouraged no one during these hours.  That was not the point.  All of His energy went into simply pressing through the immediate trial.  By looking past the immediate hardship, and seeing the blessing that was on its way, He found the strength to keep on pressing through the hurt, knowing that God was working out something greater than what was merely happening on the surface, and knowing that, if He held on, He would see amazing things on the other side of the cross.

A story, likely apocryphal, tells of an Eastern monarch who wanted to challenge his advisors.  He charged them to invent a statement that would be true in any situation, at any time, forever.  After much thought and discussion, they returned to their king with four simple words, which are always true and always valid:

“This too shall pass.”

Time marches on, faithfully and without favouritism.  Pain will fade, circumstances will change, hardships will pass, and lessons will be learned.  When you’re under siege, every day that the walls still stand is a victory.  The fact that we are under attack or being pressed is not the issue; to make it through the struggle intact is triumph enough.  Our victory comes in pressing through the ordeal, and surviving.   By holding fast and making it through, we walk in the footsteps of the Saviour (1Jn 2:6).  And if that is true, then we can also expect that, as Jesus overcame the cross with great reward, that we too will see reward as persevere through the trial.  For we are promised that, “at the proper time we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.” (Gal 6:9)