One More, Lord

In the 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge, there is a scene that will make your knees buckle. Private Desmond Doss, played by Andrew Garfield, crouches alone on the blood-soaked escarpment of Okinawa. Every other soldier has retreated. The Japanese army holds the ridge. And Doss — a combat medic who refused to carry a weapon because of his conviction before God — begins crawling through the carnage, dragging wounded men to the cliff's edge and lowering them to safety with a rope.

One after another. Through gunfire and mortar blasts. Through the night.

Each time he ties off the rope and lowers another broken body to the medics below, he whispers the same prayer: "Please, Lord, help me get one more."

His commanding officers had mocked him. Fellow soldiers had beaten him in the barracks. A court-martial nearly ended his service before it began. Every voice around him said his obedience to God was foolish, impractical, even dangerous. But Doss answered to a higher Authority.

By morning, he had saved seventy-five men.

Obedience to the Almighty rarely makes sense to the world around us. It may cost us reputation, comfort, or standing. But the Lord does not ask us to obey because the path will be easy. He asks us to obey because He sees what we cannot. The fruit of Doss's stubborn faithfulness was seventy-five lives pulled from the jaws of death.

What might God do through your quiet, costly obedience today?