Episode 1. Alert in a Battle
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Life’s a battle. I mean a real battle – it’s a battle over our eternity. Don’t know about you but that’s a battle that I for one am determined to win. And to do that – we need to …
Life’s a battle. I mean a real battle – it’s a battle over our eternity. Don’t know about you but that’s a battle that I for one am determined to win. And to do that – we need to stay alert!
Let me ask you something, have you ever been on a long drive and there you are behind the steering wheel and all of a sudden you start to find yourself getting sleepy. Really tired. Driving, driving, driving and then all of a sudden you nod off. Just for an instant and then that shock that you’ve nodded off, maybe even swerved as you come out of that little micro sleep as they call it.
It was only for a half a second but given the speed that you’re travelling at, half a second would have been more than enough to swerve into a truck hurtling towards you on the other side of the road. Pretty scary. That micro sleep thing has happened to me a few times.
When I was young and a whole bunch more stupid than I am now, not that I’m suggesting that everyone who’s young is stupid but I was. When I was young and stupid I would just keep on driving, believing somehow that I was invincible.
But the truth is that every year countless numbers of people die around the world because someone nodded off at the wheel. The drivers, their passengers, people in other vehicles, pedestrians, all die because someone fell asleep at the wheel.
And when it comes to the journey of life the really scary thing is that there are a whole bunch of people who’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.
Last couple of weeks on the program we’ve been asking ourselves the question, if I died tonight would I be ready for eternity? That’s a big question, I mean that’s a BIG question. And it’s one that we don’t like to ask so much because as much as we know that one day this life will be over. Well you know, we kind of try to live our lives as though it won’t be.
But it’s an absolute guarantee that one day either you and I are going to die or Jesus is going to come back and life as we know it, on this planet hurtling around the sun, will be over. Now the thing that any driver knows or should know is that the way to stay alive out there on the road is that we have to stay alert.
There are lots of things happening. They’re happening at high speed. Other drivers don’t always behave the way that they should. A child runs out onto the road chasing a ball. Something blows across the road. And if we’re talking away on the mobile phone, if our focus is some other place – BANG!
In fact the stats for drivers on mobile phones are these. It is significantly more dangerous to be talking on a mobile phone, even a hands free mobile phone, than it is to be over the legal blood alcohol limit. It’s true. And that’s because people’s focus shifts off the road and into the conversation that they’re having. They’re focused on the wrong thing.
There’s a word, a word that appears over and over again in the Bible when it comes to our focus on life. And the reality that one day we’ll slip from this life into a different eternity. And that word, that word is ‘alert’. Keep alert.
This week we’re going to be looking at a few of those calls for us to be alert. And if you know in your heart of hearts that when it comes to your journey through this life, hurtling at great speed towards eternity, if you know that really, truly you’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, then my prayer is that the programs this week are going to give you something of a wake up call.
Because unless we’re focused on the end game, unless we set our hearts like flint on the prize of an eternity with Jesus Christ, let me tell you something, it is so easy to nod off and wander off the path. It is so easy to step off this narrow path that leads to life and onto the wide, gentle, down hill, freeway. The road that the majority take that leads to an eternal death. Matthew chapter 7, beginning at verse 13:
Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.
In the Old Testament the command to be alert most often comes from a leader to his soldiers as they prepare for a battle. And life’s a battle. Physically and spiritually. You and I, we live on a spiritual battlefield do we not?
Anyone who decides in their heart of hearts to follow after Jesus steps out onto a spiritual battlefield and make no mistake about it, the battle’s raging. We may not see it but we experience its affects.
I was talking with a man over coffee the other day, one of the members of the board of our ministry, and he was making the point that ministry is hard. It has a special edge because of the spiritual battle and I have to tell you, he was right.
I used to run my own international consulting business. It was hard work, long hours, stresses, strains. But it was nothing on this full time ministry gig. There is a spiritual battle going on and the enemy, the devil, does not want me to do what I’m doing. Let’s have a look at one of those battles in the Old Testament. Joshua chapter 8 beginning at verse 1.
The Lord said to Joshua, ‘do not fear or be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and go up now to Ai. See I have handed over to you the king of Ai with his people, his city and his land. You shall do to Ai and it’s king as you did to Jericho and it’s king, only it’s spoil and livestock you may take as booty for yourselves. Set an ambush against this city behind it.
Joshua and all the fighting men set out to go up against Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand warriors and sent them out by night with the command, ‘You shall lie in ambush against the city behind it. Do not go very far from the city but all of you stay alert.
I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. When they come out against us as before, we shall flee from them. They will come out after us until we have drawn them away from the city for they will say, ‘they are fleeing from us as before. While we flee from them you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city for the Lord your God will give it into your hand.
The command of the soldiers lying in the ambush was ‘stay alert’. Now I spent more than 10 years as an officer in the Australian army and I have spent more nights lying in ambush during training exercises than I really care to remember.
And from personal experience, I can tell you, the easiest thing in the middle of the night in an ambush is just to nod off. In fact once our whole platoon must have nodded off because our pretend enemy walked through our ambush 3 times and not one of us fired our weapons. Boy did we get in trouble the next day, it wasn’t pretty.
The point of being alert in battle is that if you stay alert, you win the battle. And if you nod off, you’re going to lose. My friend, God has placed us on His field as His soldiers to fight the battle of life. To win it for ourselves and to win it for others and to have an impact with His love and His grace in the hearts and the lives of other people.
But so many of us have nodded off. So many of us have completely lost the focus of why we’re here. So many of us have completely lost the focus of where it is we’re going. There’s an eternity ahead of us. A whole eternity that’s forever and ever and ever and ever, without end. That’s an awfully long time.
As we saw last week on the program, the end of this life would happen in an instant. Are you ready? Are you alert? Are you awake? That’s what we’re going to be looking at over the rest of this week on the program. Are you ready?
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