I had an aunt and uncle who were twins. While fighting in the Pacific theater during World War II, my uncle would faithfully write his sister.

One day on a visit to my aunt’s home, she opened a drawer and brought out a letter sent by my uncle while he was in a combat zone. The letter was one page and handwritten. Across the face of the letter was a smear of mud from a mortar explosion that landed near my uncle. He had to pause to fight before eventually finishing the letter. 

What made my uncle’s letter so special to my aunt was the stark reality of war evidenced by a muddy mark across the face of the letter. My uncle was in the heat of battle, but thankfully, he remained alive to finish his letter and send it home.

Paul wrote letters to various churches addressing certain issues. Some of his letters were hard to understand. He wrote about the realities of living a life of truth and what it meant to remain faithful to God in life conflicts. 

In the realities of spiritual warfare, Paul wrote letters describing what it was like for him to follow the Lord. He wrote mud-smeared letters from places where people wanted to harm him, even kill him for his faith. He did this because his readers would someday be placed in harm’s way for the furtherance of the Gospel. They would carry with them the memory of what Paul suffered and endured. Because of Paul’s testimony, they would become living letters of Paul’s example of faith expressing similar conflicts in their own lives that would offer hope to those who would follow their example just as they had followed Paul.

Paul wrote, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of the human heart” (II Corinthians 3:3). 

If you are suffering for the cause of Christ, your life will bear the marks of your struggle. In the intensity of those moments of spiritual conflict, hold on to what is true. It will keep you safe in the conflict. Your life will write a letter of testimony that someone in the future will read. How you survived the battle will cause others to press deeper into God because, from your example of faithfulness in spiritual combat, they will realize what true faith looks when it’s under attack.