March 2022

No one really knows where this phrase originated, but we do know it means business.  When we are at “brass tacks,” we’re at the heart of things where all pretense and fluff is stripped away.  And so, this week we’ve seen the western world get down to brass tacks.  It has jettisoned decades of foreign and economic policy as so much fluff clogging up the essential mechanisms of security and survival.  We Christians have also striven to get to our brass tacks.  Is our faith one of them?

Brass tack – our faith must infuse, inform, and animate every part of us, or it will always teeter dangerously towards irrelevance.  The invasion of the Ukraine this past week has made this frighteningly clear as we struggle to allow Lord Jesus to reign over every thought, motive, and action.  How are we to pray?  What does “loving our enemies” look like?  If we haven’t seriously wrestled with God’s sovereignty, the current situation is well beyond our spiritual training.  So, let’s get down to it.

God has delivered nations from oppression before.  He did this for righteous Hezekiah against Sennacherib by dramatically wiping out 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp.  Sennacherib went home and was killed by his sons (II Kings 19:35-37).  But He also delivered unrighteous Joram from the Arameans (II Kings 7), throwing their army into confusion and sending them to panicked flight.  God didn’t just deliver Israel either.  In Jeremiah, He promises restoration to several nations from Egypt to Moab, Ammon to Elam.

God has dramatically struck down those rulers opposed to His purposes who, by their actions, set themselves up as gods themselves.  We have Sihon and Og (Psalm 136:20) as one of many examples in the Old Testament and Herod in the New (Acts 12:21-23).  He incapacitated others – the most notable, Pharoah in Exodus; but we also are mindful of Nebuchadnezzar’s blasphemy and the humbling he received in Daniel 4.

God’s people have prayed for deliverance before.  These were generalities in Exodus 2:23, but Hezekiah’s prayer in II Kings 19 is instructive as he petitions God to consider Sennacherib’s insults and asks directly for deliverance.  The martyrs under God’s alter plead with Him in Revelation 6:9-10 and are told to wait just a little longer.

So brass tacks – do I bring my faith to bear?  How am I to pray in this current situation?  I’ll admit, I’d like God to give Putin a stroke, a heart attack, or worse.  But it is not ours to give God our helpful advice as to the means of removal and relief.  I’m reminded that all rulers are set up by God – David never moved against Saul and even the archangel Michael pulled punches with Satan himself, trusting in the Lord’s rebuke (Jude 9).

But we can pray for removal.  We can pray for confusion and apathy in the camp.  We can pray for an incapacitation of the leadership.  We can pray for a change of heart.  We can pray for God to consider Putin’s blasphemy and blatant disregard for God.  We can pray for the miraculous.  These are my brass tacks fastening my faith squarely in the middle to the living of these days.