Week Twenty-Eight, 2018
BE ON GUARD
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
1 Corinthians 16:13
By Senator John Grant, (FL, Retd)
My parents had a chicken farm way out from town. I lived there until I was married and still live on the same property, though now in an urbanized area. As a youngster, I attended a true country school, where many students wore overalls and many didn’t wear shoes. A lot were children of ranch hands and grove tenders.
Although we went to town to church on most Sundays, I often attended activities at a country church, which was a Missouri missionary church started by a family in 1895. When I was there many of the then larger membership were descendants of that family.
The original church was a wood structure that was built a distance away and moved to the new location by rolling it on pine logs. They hitched the church to mules and horses and each Saturday, they pulled as far as they could and on the next day, worshipped where they left off the day before.
In 1925, a new sanctuary was built to accommodate a growing congregation. That’s where I often worshipped. I was impressed with its high brick bell tower.
A recently released history book speaks of the tower. World War II broke out about the time I was born. War was raging in both the European and Asian theatres. Planes were needed and pilots to fly them. Many training fields were built and most were in Florida, due to flat land that sped up construction. Three were built in our county and surprise attacks were always a concern.
The church bell tower was selected as a watchtower to spot for enemy aircraft, because though unlikely, the enemy could always be lurking anywhere at any time. As a small boy, I saw many aircraft fly over our home and always wondered if they were friend or foe.
Life is like that. The enemy is always on the prowl, always looking for a place to strike. We are far more equipped to stand firm against Satan’s attacks when we are aware of them. If you are a Christian you can assume an attack is pending, the Bible makes that clear. The difficulty comes in recognizing it.
To protect ourselves, we must learn to identify an attack of Satan for what it is. When we fail to recognize that, we tend to blame other people. We put all our energy into battling them, instead of standing firm against the real enemy. Meanwhile, Satan leads us farther and farther off track.
It’s that time of the year when we pause to celebrate victory. Independence, liberty and freedom. While that is and should be our focus, we should always be on the lookout for an enemy ready to strike. As Paul told the church at Corinth, Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
Who is in your watchtower and who are you waiting to push out of your life? Always celebrate liberty, but always be on guard for the enemy who could strike at any time.
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SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
Jerrie Barber tells the story of an unusual parking ticket that was given in south-central Los Angeles several years ago. At 9:46 a.m. an officer wrote up the ticket for an illegally parked Cadillac. There was no question that the car was in violation. The driver did not object to the ticket. In fact, the driver didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. He was dead!
Paramedics said the man had been dead ten to twelve hours when the ticket was given. The officer had taken the time to observe the parking violation, write a ticket, then stick his hand through the open window (within inches of the body stiffly sitting upright behind the steering wheel) and placed the $30 citation on the dashboard. He never noticed the man was dead.
“That officer shares a common trait with many Christians,” observed Jerrie. “We walk through life citing others with petty violations while remaining oblivious to the fact that they are spiritually dead. We are offended or repulsed by the behavior of some non-Christians and rebuke them for not acting more Christ-like. The fact is, they don’t have the power for real change. They are ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’ They are ‘illegally parked’ and can’t do a thing about it apart from Christ.
Some things are just more important than other things.
This is true in business. Sports. Government. Our homes. It is true in life’s tasks. My Franklin planner teaches priorities. You list all your tasks for the day and rank them in order of importance. Then begin with the most important.
It is also true in Christianity. While everything is important, there are some fundamentals that must rank with greater importance. James Montgomery Boice expressed it this way.
“It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Christ’s Cross. For whether we are thinking about the necessity of the Cross, the meaning of the Cross, the preaching of the Cross, the offense of the Cross, or the way of the Cross – however we may think about it – in every case what we are saying, and must be saying, is that the Cross is central to Christianity. Indeed, we are saying more. We are saying that without the Cross of Jesus Christ there is no true Christianity at all.” –- Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace, p. 89
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QUOTES YOU CAN USE
On the day Sam Houston was baptized, he offered to pay half the minister’s salary in the church. When someone asked him about it, he said, “My pocketbook was baptized, too.
Our world is on fire, and man without God cannot control the flames. The demons of hell have been let loose. The fires of passion, greed, hate, and lust are sweeping the world. We seem to be plunging madly toward Armageddon. We live in the midst of crisis, danger, fear, and death. We sense that something is about to happen. We know that things cannot go on as they are. Billy Graham
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Selected portions of Thoughts on Life can also be read at TheLife.com.
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©2018 John Grant | Florida State Senator (Ret.) | 10025 Orange Grove Drive | Tampa, FL