Dig the Corners

“Again,” Jason commanded.

Our team of four lined up and prepared to breach the center entry room. Outside the door, Matt, the number one, stood poised. Marty, in the number two position, gave Matt’s shoulder a squeeze, signaling action. Matt pushed into the room, moving to the closest corner, sweeping around, rifle trained in front, and clearing the two right corners. Marty moved in behind Matt and swept the opposite corners. Fighting to control my breath, I entered, focused on the center of the room, while our number four, Dan, covered our rear and entered last. Deafening sounds reverberated in the small room. Simulated rounds struck role playing trainers. They caught one hiding under an old desk in the corner and another behind a couch.

“Good!” Jason affirmed. “Dig those corners! Don’t give the enemy any place to hide. Secure the points of domination!”

Our tendency as newbies during close quarters combat CQB training was to focus too much on what was in front of us or in the center of the room when the greatest threats were hiding along the edges.

For hours, we trained in CQB on how to eliminate the enemy with surprise, speed, and overwhelming force of violence.

I’d never trained in any combative scenarios before, nor served in the U.S. Military or law enforcement. This was for fun as an experience provided by the Donovan & Bank Foundation, for people like me to get a small taste, a grain of salt’s worth, of how our kinetic operators overcome the enemy and liberate the enslaved.

Then again, maybe it’s not too different from the close-quarters battle we fight against the enemy and sin every day (2 Corinthians 7:1, Romans 7:18-19, Ephesians 6:12).

Jason’s prime directive reverberates in my mind, like Psalm 139:23-24, 2 Corinthians 13:5, and Lamentations 3:40.

The obvious things, sins that are front and center, seem easier to kill. “Digging the corners” allows the Holy Spirit to show me the hidden ones, the ones I can’t overcome with discipline. These are the entrenched strongholds and missed spaces of my heart—the dark spots where destructive sins seek to rob me from the abundant life Jesus came to give me (John 10:10b).“Digging” is reading the Word daily with humility so it pierces my heart (Hebrews 4:12).

And once revealed, the Spirit convicts us and reminds us that our Father in Heaven loves us and wants a relationship with us. The Spirit then redirects us from the entanglements that bind us and towards Christ, who freed us (1 John 1:7).

When I name my sin, confess my sin to God, as well as those I’m walking with, He promises forgiveness and healing (Psalm 32:5, James 5:16, 1 John 1:9).

In John Owen’s book, The Mortification of Sin, he says,

“sin is always active when it seems to be the most quiet, and its waters are often deep when they are calm. We should therefore fight against it and be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even when there is the least suspicion… Sin is always acting, always conceiving, and always seducing and tempting. Who can say that he has ever had anything to do with God or for God, which indwelling sin has not tried to corrupt? This battle will last more or less all our days. If sin is always acting, we are in trouble if we are not always mortifying.

This is war.

But it’s a war we fight with unconventional weapons. We don’t breach physical doors or fire hollow-point rounds. Our weapons are in the Spirit and full of divine power (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We fight with truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, prayer, and the Word (Ephesians 6:13-18).

It’s a war we’ve already won.

Jesus has preceded us, fought on our behalf, removed the beasts (Leviticus 26:6), and secured eternal victory over sin and the enemy. He’s set us free, like He promised in Isaiah 61. But the battle continues as long as we’re on this side of heaven. We must dig the corners every day until he returns.