With My Face to the Enemy

Colonel Isaac Avery was a soldier who took his last breath in a field hospital on the Gettysburg battlefield. Colonel Avery was shot from his horse as he led an assault on a hill during the second day of the battle. He was shot in the neck and unable to speak. His right arm was paralyzed. You wonder what a man thinks about in final moments like that. We don’t have to wonder what Isaac Avery was thinking. There was something very important to him that he wanted to make sure he communicated before he died. With his aide kneeling by his side, he took out a scrap of paper and wrote this message with his left hand. “Major, tell my father I died with my face to the enemy. I. E. Avery." It was critically important to him that his father knew that his face, not his back, was toward the enemy when he died. He wanted his dad to know that he had been faithful to do his duty all the way to the end. He did not deviate. He did not turn away.

With my face to the enemy. That is how every Christian man should strive to live and strive to die. We are to be dressed in the armor of God resisting schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:10-17). But the enemy exerts great pressure to try to cause us to compromise and turn our backs on the battlefield. It can happen to any of us. Peter was a disciple of Jesus. He had his face to the enemy. But on the night before Jesus was crucified, that changed. First, Peter warmed himself by the fire of the enemy. This is compromise. He turned his back on the enemy when he denied Christ and then ran away. He was a coward in that moment. But I am thankful that that is not the final chapter in Peter’s life story. He repented and returned to the Lord. He put on his armor and once again turned his face toward the enemy. He preached in Jerusalem staring into the eyes of some of the very people who killed Jesus. His face was to the enemy. When he came to the end of his life, he was faithful. He was ready. He died with his face to the enemy. As you read this today, where are you in relationship to the kingdom of darkness? Are you warming yourself by the enemy’s fire? Are you running away from your duty with your back to the enemy? Or is your face steadfastly toward the enemy? God calls us to be men who live and die with our face to the enemy. Oh, God help us to be found faithful!

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