God’s Gunfighters Chapter One

God’s Gunfighters

One

Peril and Preparation

“But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready…”

Lk 12:39

Bob Cahill was in trouble. Somehow on that windswept evening of April 14, 1885, he had offended Buck Linn, the most notorious gunman in El Paso. Linn prowled El Paso’s streets hunting Cahill, intending to kill him on sight.

Young Cahill had never been in a gunfight. But he knew someone who had. In the Gem Saloon he found Wyatt Earp, former lawman of Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona. Cahill sought the veteran’s advice.

“He’ll come shooting,” Earp told Cahill. “Have your gun cocked, but don’t pull until you’re certain what you’re shooting at. Aim for his belly, low. The gun’ll throw up a bit, but if you hold it tight and wait until he’s close enough you can’t miss. Keep cool and take your time.”

The gunfight unfolded as Earp had described. Linn burst into the saloon, spotted Cahill and began blasting. Cahill, following Earp’s counsel, drew a bead on Linn’s bowels with a borrowed pistol, and fired. Linn collapsed mortally wounded. He died in a pool of his own blood.

All living persons share Cahill’s peril. A killer stalks them, bent on destroying them body and soul. Unprepared, these hapless victims will lose their fights. Their enemy is cunning, ruthless, and he has killed before. Bob Cahill, knowing he was in imminent danger, used his few available minutes preparing to face his adversary. And because he prepared, he prevailed. The dreaded gunman fell before a novice.

Like Bob Cahill, a man need not face his enemies alone and unarmed. But first he must recognize the realms of the soul for what they are: battlefields. His life, and that of his family, friends, associates, and even those strangers strolling the sidewalks with him, may depend on his ability to recognize a threat, stand his ground against it, and engage his weapons to diffuse, disarm and defeat his enemy. Should he fail, his most precious treasures may be pillaged and destroyed.

Such ruin is avoidable. A man can choose to become a spiritual gunfighter. In making that decision, he elects to lay aside apathy and laziness. Instead he pursues a regimen that will forge him into a fighter. While others squander time in idle pursuits, he prepares himself to meet any and all opponents.

Bat Masterson, one of America’s more famous frontier marshals, listed three qualities necessary for a successful gunman. Writing for Human Life magazine in 1907, he said:

“Courage to step out and fight to the death with a pistol is but one of three qualities a man must possess in order to last very long in this hazardous business. A man may possess the greatest amount of courage possible and still be a pathetic failure as a ‘gun fighter,’ as men are often called in the West who have gained reputations as ‘man-killers.’ Courage is of little use to a man who essays to arbitrate a difference with a pistol if he is inexperienced in the use of the weapon he is going to use. Then again he may possess both courage and experience and still fail if he lacks deliberation. Any man who does not possess courage, proficiency in the use of firearms, and deliberation had better make up his mind at the beginning to settle his personal differences in some other manner than by an appeal to the pistol. I have known men in the West whose courage could not be questioned and whose expertness with the pistol was simply marvelous, who fell easy victims before men who added deliberation to the other two qualities.”

Courage, skill and deliberation, according to Bat Masterson, were essential when fighting with guns. Those same traits are the pillars of spiritual prowess. Weaken or remove one column, and a man will falter in a spiritual struggle. Undermine or eliminate more, and the man will be overrun. Courage (the will to walk uprightly), skill (experience with spiritual weaponry) and deliberation (the ability to fight well under duress) are crucial to success in the conflicts surrounding the soul.

Walking uprightly takes courage. It means facing an enemy rather than shrinking from him. It means keeping to convictions when others cave. In spiritual confrontations, adversaries are not necessarily people, but the forces that manipulate and motivate them. Courage in spiritual struggles means resisting temptation and opposing evil. Whether an attack rises from an external source, or wells up within one’s self, the courageous man actively pursues right over wrong.

Without skill, courage is useless. A man unskilled in the use of spiritual weaponry is vulnerable at best. How much more helpless is a man who has no idea what his weapons are? Most people recognize the dangerous end of a gun, and they know that pulling the trigger fires a bullet. How does one aim a spiritual weapon? Does it have a muzzle? Are there bullets? A safety lever? Unless a man acquaints himself with his arsenal and exercises it, he will fail as a spiritual warrior.

Deliberation in spiritual struggles may be called wisdom or maturity. It is partially attained through exercise and experience. But true deliberation comes only by constant training under the guidance of a master tutor. While courage and skill are essential when confronting a soul’s adversaries, recklessly blazing away at them is ineffective, as Buck Linn discovered to his regret. A man must know when to shoot, how to shoot, and make the shot count.

Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.

Prov. 19:2

Courage, skill and deliberation are the stones on which spiritual prowess stands. A man in whom these pillars are stout and strong is a formidable warrior, a tower to his friends and a terror to his enemies. They are available to any man who wants them enough to work for them.