#070: Some Nations Boast in Armies. We Boast in the Name of God. 🙏
They prayed through air raid alerts with missiles striking nearby cities. Meanwhile the Western church struggles to stay off its phone for one hour on Sunday.
Welcome, Family
Last week: you will either bow by faith or bow by force. We chose faith.
This week: The Faith Under Fire Issue. Because sometimes God doesn’t speak through a sermon. He speaks through a news article that makes you feel ashamed of your excuses.
On August 23, 2026, 1,500 people gathered in Kyiv, Ukraine for the country’s National Prayer Breakfast. This July was Ukraine’s deadliest month since the full-scale war began in February 2022. Air raid alerts sounded the night before. Missiles were striking nearby cities during the days surrounding the event. And 650 people flew in from 17 countries specifically to be there.
They didn’t pray despite the danger. They prayed in it. That distinction is the entire issue.
⏳ THE SIGN
The Comfort Gap
The average American churchgoer drives 20 minutes to a climate-controlled building, sits in a cushioned seat, checks their phone twice during worship, and calls it a sacrifice.
The comparison is not made to condemn. It is made to diagnose.
Because when you put Western church culture next to what happened in Kyiv on August 23, something becomes visible that is very hard to unsee. The gap between faith as a lifestyle preference and faith as a convicting, costly, death-defying reality.
Zelensky warned the room that the greatest danger facing Ukraine is not fatigue at the front. It is the world getting used to the war. Compassion fatigue. Numbing. The slow drift from active grief to passive awareness to complete indifference.
The Diagnosis: The same drift happens in personal faith. You start on fire. Then comfortable. Then you’re checking the time during prayer and wondering when the service ends. The Ukrainians in that room activated air raid apps before bed and showed up anyway. What is your excuse for not showing up fully?
📖 THE WORD
Psalm 20:7 & The Boast That Holds
“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”
Psalm 20:7 (KJV)
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”
Psalm 46:1-2 (KJV)
“I do always those things which please the Father.”
John 8:29 (KJV)
Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg stood at the Kyiv prayer breakfast. A man who spent 36 years in the US Army, who understands military strategy, weapons systems, and geopolitical power better than almost anyone in that room, and paraphrased Psalm 20:7.
Some nations boast of their armies and weapons. We boast in the name of God.
That is not naive. That is not the statement of someone who doesn’t understand what missiles do to civilian infrastructure. That is the statement of someone who understands exactly what missiles do, and has chosen a different foundation anyway.
The Psalm 46 People:
The Ukrainians at that breakfast were Psalm 46 people in real time. Not reading it as poetry. Living it as reality.
Psalm 46 was not written in peacetime. It was written for people watching mountains shake and nations rage. It describes a city with a river whose streams bring joy, while the earth is being removed around it. The writers were not detached from the chaos. They were inside it. And they chose not to fear.
The minute of silence at 9am, a daily national pause to honor the fallen, was not despair. It was grief held inside faith. The Ukrainian Christians in that room had buried people they loved. They had spent nights in underground metro stations. They had heard the blast of missiles striking their city. And they gathered to pray anyway.
Not as a coping mechanism. As a conviction.
The Boast That Doesn’t Break:
Every earthly boast has a breaking point. Armies run out of interceptors. Weapons stockpiles get depleted. Alliances shift based on political winds. A Ukrainian adviser noted they needed 150 Patriot missiles and Washington had not committed. The earthly defense system was insufficient.
But the prayer breakfast happened anyway. Because the boast was never in the Patriot missiles.
The name of the Lord does not run out. It does not get depleted in one war and unavailable for the next. It does not shift based on political winds or international relations. It was the same name that parted the Red Sea, that raised the dead, that walked out of a tomb on the third day, and it is the same name over Kyiv right now.
Some nations boast in chariots. Some in horses. Some in Patriot missile systems. We remember the name of the Lord our God.
🌍 THE WITNESS
Three Portraits of Faith Under Fire
The article from Kyiv is full of people worth paying attention to. Here are three.
PORTRAIT 1: OKSANA KRAVCHUK She hadn’t slept much on the overnight train from Poland. The air raid app alarmed several times. She was tired from traveling from Seattle. She was scared.
She went anyway. Not because she wasn’t afraid. Because she knew why she was going.
That is the definition of courage that the church has largely lost. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of a purpose larger than the fear. Oksana had one. She showed up.
How many times have you stayed home from something God called you to because it was inconvenient, uncomfortable, or slightly scary? She crossed an active war zone. What is your Red Sea?
PORTRAIT 2: ADAM BARNETT Senior pastor of missions. Received the invitation to the Kyiv prayer breakfast. Almost said no because his daughter was starting her senior year.
He went. And when he walked through the rows of Ukrainian flags and photos of fallen soldiers at Independence Square, he said: “It makes a statement, a really loud statement, when we stand with Ukraine on their soil.”
The comfort of being present for a milestone at home is real. It matters. But there are moments when the call to go is louder than the comfort of staying. Barnett heard it. He went. And he came back with something no sermon at home could have given him.
The Western church has become extraordinarily good at finding reasonable reasons not to go. Not to give. Not to sacrifice. Not to show up where it costs something. Barnett’s almost-no is the most honest thing in the entire article. And his yes is the most instructive.
PORTRAIT 3: THE UNNAMED UKRAINIANS They sheltered underground for twenty minutes during an air raid alert. Pulled their luggage into the metro. Chatted while they waited. Came back up when the all-clear sounded.
Unflappable. That was the word used to describe them.
Not because they weren’t in danger. Because they had been in danger long enough to decide that fear was not going to be the primary operating system of their lives. They had made a choice, probably not in one dramatic moment but across four and a half years of accumulated decisions, to live above the anxiety that their circumstances fully justified.
General Kellogg said it: you can’t beat the heart of the country.
You cannot manufacture that heart with comfort. It is forged exclusively in the furnace. Which is why the Ukrainians in that metro station had something that no amount of Western safety and convenience can produce.
🔥 THE WORK
The Faith Under Fire Audit
1. The Comfort Inventory What comfortable thing are you currently treating as sacrifice? Name it. Then name one thing faith is actually asking of you that you’ve been avoiding because it costs too much.
2. The Boast Check What are you currently trusting in that has a breaking point? Career security, financial reserves, relationships, reputation. What happens to your faith when that thing gets depleted? Find the boast that doesn’t break and build there instead.
3. The Show Up Question Where is God asking you to be physically, financially, or emotionally present in someone else’s suffering right now? Not to post about it. To actually show up. What is your almost-no that needs to become a yes?
4. The Unflappable Practice The Ukrainians didn’t become unflappable in one night. They became unflappable across thousands of small decisions to choose faith over fear. What is one small decision you can make today that practices that same muscle?
🙏 PRAYER CORNER
Every Wednesday at 8:00 PM EST, we gather, and we mean it.
Let’s Pray:
“Father, we confess we have been comfortable calling it faith.
We have stayed home when You said go. We have stayed safe when You said show up. We have trusted in systems that run out of interceptors and called it wisdom.
Forgive us. The Ukrainians in that room prayed through air raid alerts with missiles striking nearby. They sheltered underground and came back up unflappable. They have something we want.
Build it in us. Not through more comfort. Through the furnace that forges it.
Some nations boast in chariots. Some in horses. Teach us to remember the name of the Lord our God, and to show up wherever that name is being proclaimed, regardless of the cost.
Amen.”
Life is hard. If you need us to pray for you, reach out below.
✝️ Final Word
1,500 people gathered to pray in a city under active missile attack. 650 flew in from 17 countries to be there. A general quoted Psalms. A president warned that the world was getting used to the war. Ukrainians sheltered underground for twenty minutes and came back up chatting.
The Western church watched from a safe distance and called it staying informed.
That is not a condemnation. It is an invitation. Because the faith that holds under fire is available to every believer. It is just built in the furnace, not the comfort zone.
You were not made for the comfort zone. We established that in issue one.
Some nations boast in armies. Boast in the name that doesn’t run out.
Join the Journey
In His Love,
Ravi Patel & Chriss Mogaka
Mogaka Events Ministry
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