The Fight of Our Lives

Revelation 12:3; 19:11-13; 20:2, 10 NLT -

Then I witnessed in heaven another significant event. I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads... Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God... He seized the dragon, that old serpent, who is the devil, Satan - and bound him in chains for a thousand years...Then the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

---

For those who don't know, I play Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop roleplaying game in which myself and several of my friends create characters, roll dice, and build stories together. It's a lot of fun, especially with the group I'm with. Last night, a story we have been following for 2.5 years and over 40 sessions came to an end with the fight of our lives. At the top of the picture below is us and our friend Bob the young dragon. Filling the rest of the photo is the Red Tyrant, an Ancient Red Dragon, the final boss of our collective storylines.

We went into this fight severely outsized and outmatched. We were at 3/4 of the level we should have been and Bob was our only ally. However, we knew that waiting any longer to fight would result in our characters' friends and family being kidnapped, tortured, or killed by the Red Tyrant. We had prepared all we could, gathering information and stocking up on supplies to keep us safe in the battle, but there was nothing more we could do. It was now or never. We were going to kill this dragon or die trying.

Upon entering the room, we realised that we had a problem. The dragon had already managed to take a few of our friends and had them locked in cages at the back of the room. If we wanted fight him, we first had to save them while he attacked us. It took a while, but we got all of them out of the cages and out of the room, but had taken some heavy hits in the process, leaving us quite hurt, battered, and bruised. However, we could now turn our attention to hitting back. Bob and I got up close, annoying and distracting the dragon so he would attack us instead of our more fragile friends. We ended up as living punching bags, but it allowed the other two to get a number of good hits from a distance, slowly whittling down his health.

For a while things were looking okay, but as time passed both Bob and I started running out of health. I got hit hard, but managed to stay up due to some magic we had used in our preparations. I got hit again, and this time fell unconscious. Eventually, Bob met the same fate. Each time we fell unconscious, one of our friends would rush over and heal us as soon as they can to get us back in the fight, and we would just as quickly be knocked back down. There was one point where I managed to stay up again long enough to land a heavy hit of my own, but within a couple of rounds I was unconscious again. Our healing supplies got smaller and smaller until we had nearly nothing left, and then bad turned to worse. I fell unconscious for what must have been the 7th or 8th time, and this time the Red Tyrant was not taking any chances. He hit my still body once, twice, and... I was dead. Bob had already died several rounds earlier. Now, the dragon was free to attack our friends with no interference. Things seemed hopeless, and we resigned ourselves to our fate - we were going to lose, and though my friends were still throwing as much as we could at the Tyrant, we knew it wasn't going to be enough.

In a last ditch effort to get us back into the fight, our rogue used a limited resurrection spell on Bob, bringing him back with only 1HP. He drank his last healing potion, then flew me out of the room to use the same spell on me, something we were only able to do thanks to our preparations. We flew back into the room and above the Red Tyrant, and I was ready to give my all in a last ditch attempt to take him out before he could get to my friends. But then... a miracle.

You see, each of us served a deity of some sort within the world. I had tried asking mine for help, to no avail. So had our ranger. We had exhausted all of our attempts. The rogue hadn't even bothered to ask her patron, thinking she would get no response, but with nowhere else to turn she prayed. Once... no response. Twice... no answer. But on her third and final attempt, she rolled the very minimum required on the die to get a response. Her patron sent a major dose of HP our way, healing all of us back up to full and getting us back in the fight. It wasn't over yet, but we now had a major chance. Our strength, energy, and hope were renewed, and we threw ourselves against the dragon with everything we had left.

The dragon started to panic. Where he was once the one in control, the one who intimidated, the one who had the power, he was now losing - and quickly. In a last ditch effort, he tried to hit our rogue with the full force of a fire breath, hoping to take revenge on the one who had brought us to him in the first place. But when his fire ran out, there she stood, untouched and ready to deliver the killing blow.

It took a lot of preparation, the best strategy we could come up with, a lot of on the spot thinking, and nothing less than a miracle at the eleventh hour, but we came out victorious, and with not a single one of us, our friends, or our family lost. We had saved them all, and each other. Exhiliration and relief washed over us, and we finally brought our 2.5 year long story to a close, sharing what we each did in the days, weeks, and months and years following the fight.

Even as the fight was playing out, I was astounded at the level of spiritual symbolism and significance it had. In the verse above, we see that in the book of Revelation, Satan is described as none other than a red dragon - albeit one with many more heads. Compared to us, he is a very large, powerful being who outmatches us severely. He intimidates and tricks us into thinking that he has all of the power and control so that we lose hope in our fight against him, feeling as though all is lost and we are dead. Not only that, but he has taken our friends and family captive, enslaving them in cages of their own sin and blindness, and if we ever hope to fight him we first need to find a way to free them. The situation feels like all too much, and quite often we go into our spiritual battles feeling painfully inadequate and vulnerable.

However, nothing changes if we don't fight. Our friends are not under attack by Satan - we are, because we are the ones trying to free them. We strain and strive to reach them and break them out of their cages and despite constantly being under attack and sometimes even taking some heavy blows from the enemy, those who strategize, work together, and persevere will reach the ones who are enslaved and help break them free. We can show them who their real enemy is and guide them towards freedom, and we can take the brunt of the attacks on their behalf through prayer so that they can be spared and delivered. They will face their own battles in time, but during those initial stages of weakness it is so important that we fight on their behalf so that they don't run back to their cages for fear of safety. In the cages, they won't be attacked. The moment they step out, they become targets. We need to come alongside and support new Christians through prayer, pastoral care, and community so that they can be freed completely of Satan's grip.

Then, we fight the dragon. If we go into spiritual warfare without preparation and a strategy, we will lose without question. We are simply no match for that tyrant on our own. However, with wise counsel, godly community, constant prayer, fasting where necessary, and (most importantly) the grace and guidance of our God, the Almighty Warrior King, we can enter the battle unafraid and unaffected by the dragon's temptations to despair. In this, it's crucial that we rely on God's strategies and strength, not our own, and that we include regular times to recover by spending time in God's Presence. Without those, our defences will be worn down so thinly that they lose all effectiveness.

We also need to come prepared to fall. In the same way that both Bob and my own character fell unconscious on countless occasions, there will be times when we get overwhelmed by the sheer force and brutality of Satan's attacks. He does not want us to win no matter what, because our victory means others are freed and he loses territory, so he will throw everything he has against us. The more of a threat we are, the more severe his attacks will become. This is why preparation and community are so important. There were times that our preparation resulted in my surviving an attack that would otherwise have killed me or knocked me unconscious. On the times when I did go under, it was my friends who got me back on my feet and back in the fight because I was no longer able to. We need to be vulnerable and rely on our Christian community as if our lives depend on it, because in a sense they do. We need to be honest enough with them to admit when we are down so that they can pray for us, support us, pick us back up, and get us back in the fight. It might not be with much left, and we might get knocked down again quickly, but it saves us from being wiped out completely, and that makes a far bigger difference than we often realise.

We need to persevere, even when it feels in the natural as if the fight is over. If we had given up and stopped fighting after I died, we would never have won. The dragon would have won, and 2.5 years worth of storytelling and close community would have ended in our characters' deaths. It would have been such a sad, bitter way to end what had been such a magnificent, thrilling, exciting, often emotional ride. But because we kept fighting with everything we had until our very last breath, because we kept getting up again every time we fell down, because we kept throwing ourselves into the battle wholeheartedly knowing that our choices were to kill the dragon or die in the attempt, we lived long enough to see a miracle.

Most of all, we need a miracle. Praise God that He does not answer our prayers based on our good behaviour, our worthiness, or especially on mere fate or luck. We do not need to roll a die and hope that fortune favours us in that given moment. Our God is a God who listens and provides (see Genesis 16:13 and 22:14 for those names of God). He is not passive and distant, watching the world from afar to see how things will play out for the sake of His own entertainment. He loves us so much that He sent Himself in bodily form to live a full human life from birth to puberty to death, suffering every temptation known to man yet without sinning, all so that we could be reconciled in relationship with Him. He is a proactive God who cares deeply about our struggles and suffering, and everything He does He does for our good. He will let us face trials, He will let us experience the battle, but He will never let us face it alone. In our moment of greatest need, He will reach out to us and renew our strength, energy, hope, and ability to keep fighting until we see the victory that He has promised us come to pass (see 1 Cor 10:13). It doesn't mean the battle is over, but it means that we can jump back in and continue throwing everything we have left into it until our demons have been conquered and we are standing triumphant, all for the sake of His glory and honour as well as our own development and growth.

I understand that today's has been a longer post than usual. As I've been writing this, I've also been realising that each of these paragraphs could be a Thought of the Day in their own right, and at this stage I am inclined to do just that. For now, however, I will summarise with the the thought that has been burning in my mind as if branded in the wake of this fight:

That menacing red dragon Satan is defeated. He has no more power, only the appearance of it. To those who hold firmly to the promises of our God and persevere in the battle, He will perform miracles unlike anything we've seen and deliver us and those around us from our spiritual cages so we may walk in freedom with Him.

I hope you all have a great day (whenever you may be reading this) and pray that our great and loving Lord will fill you with the courage, strength, hope, and grace you need to begin, restart, continue, or finish your spiritual battles. Until next time,

Jordan.