Have you ever been worn out, backed into a corner, and devoid of allies? Your own attitude may be your ticket out of a bad place.
In 1 Samuel chapter 30 we read of David, before he was king. On the run from King Saul, he had linked up with, and began leading, 600 men in raids against neighboring enemies of Israel. Building on his success as one of Saul’s most prominent army officers, David’s success continued as a bandit. It ended one day as he and his band of outlaws were away from their home base (a place called Ziklag), leaving it defenseless.
Earlier, in 1 Samuel chapter 15, the Lord had commanded Saul to completely wipe out a people called the Amalekites. Saul chose not to obey God, and one of the consequences of that disobedience was a group of Amalekite raiders attacking Ziklag while none of the warriors were around to defend it. The wives and children of David’s band were all taken captive and carried away as prisoners.
When David’s men learned of it, some of them wept and wailed until they had no more strength left to continue weeping. Their despair turned to anger, and right or wrong, they directed that anger at David. Whispers began spreading through the camp; they began talking about stoning David to death.
At this point David didn’t seem to have anyone he could rely on. Not only was he on the run from the king of Israel (who had more than once tried to pin him to the wall with a spear), he had also been kicked out of a land providing him sanctuary despite his exemplary behavior because high-ranking officials didn’t trust him. Now, as his own two wives were taken from him and he was at a very low point in his life, his own group of thugs began to turn on him too. He had no earthly partners he could count on. Demonstrating why he was known as a “man after God’s own heart,” he did something in 1 Samuel 30:6 we can all take a lesson from. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
There may be times in your Christian walk where it feels like everyone’s turned their back on you and you’re walking alone. Aside from God, you might very well have no other help. It might come down to your ability to encourage yourself that the Lord is still in control, and He has a reason for putting you through the struggles you’re facing. Place some encouraging scriptures in places you’ll see them regularly, find some devotionals and daily encouragements that hit the right spot, and spend time in prayer. Pour your heart out to God; it’s okay, tell Him how you feel! David had plenty of honest sessions with Him, too.
After this low point in the story, David spent time inquiring what the Lord would have him do. That’s an example we should follow. God led him out of that tough time, and David was stronger as a result of having gone through it. Though things are hard, hang in there! God won’t abandon you. Encourage yourself in the Lord, so even when everyone else abandons you, you still have faith in Him.
I recently had the opportunity to have a conversation with a woman who had recently received an unwanted diagnosis. It’s something that, to say the least, is taking some getting used to.
During the course of the conversation, there were two encouraging ideas that came up, which can be applied to other peoples’ lives, too:
This diagnosis didn’t catch God off guard.
This new set of circumstances in no way changes God’s will for your life.
We’ve all had something come along and take the wind out of our sails. As we get ready to kick off holiday season, please be mindful of the people around you who may be going through a particularly challenging time. The holidays, especially, can be a trying time, and you may have been placed in their life for such a time as this.
Never in my life have I been excited to watch a live boxing match…until last week, when “Iron Mike” Tyson returned to the ring.
Back in his prime, Tyson was known as “the baddest man on the planet.” His punching power and pure tenacity were unrivaled. He’s the dude that bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear! Not only would I not want to meet this guy in a dark alley; I’d be skittish meeting him with a bunch of burly dudes between him and I. When I was a kid, they had video games featuring this guy. If you could beat him in the game, you were the cat’s pajamas!
So when the much-hyped fight between him and a young boxing upstart arrived, I had to tune in. Tyson, a 58-year-old man, was stepping in the ring with an arrogant social media star less than half his age. Everybody I knew wanted Iron Mike to clean this guy’s clock. I hadn’t been this excited about a boxing match since watching a Rocky movie!
Coverage began at 8:00 pm, and there was an undercard to get through before the main event. I watched a movie with one of my kiddos to help pass the time. I checked back in around 10:30. We still had a long time to go before the big fight. People around me started going to bed. Things just kept dragging on and on. I finally threw in the towel and ended up going to bed probably around 12:30-1:00 in the morning, and the fight was still some time away.
The next morning was a Saturday, but I couldn’t sleep. I woke up after just a few hours and tried in vain to go back to sleep. I got out of bed probably at 5 in the morning to go watch the fight. Everybody else in the house was still asleep. I didn’t check online to find out what happened, I wanted to watch it unfold the way it really happened.
After watching the hype videos and the fighters’ entrances, it was finally time to start the bout! In the first round, Tyson stood toe to toe with his opponent and delivered some decent shots. Could he knock the guy out?
As time went on, it became very apparent that time waits for no man, not even the baddest man on the planet. He still had punching power, but had lost his timing and reflexes, and the killer instinct had faded. He looked nervous and tentative as he grew tired. His old legs didn’t allow him to pursue his opponent around the ring, so he was forced to mostly play defense as the younger man circled around him. Tyson just didn’t have the tools he used to possess. By the start of the last round, I was just hoping Tyson could get through it without getting seriously hurt. In the end, nobody scored any knockdowns or knockouts. The younger guy landed more punches, and the judges awarded him the win.
Time doesn’t stop ticking. I’m at an age now where I can no longer do some of the things I could formerly do, but I’m not so old that I let it stop me from trying. Sometimes it works out okay, but other times I end up being sore for days. I think it’s good to take a lesson from Iron Mike and recognize that your combination of abilities, skills, and desire will change as you get older. The Lord has charged you with certain things to accomplish in this life, whether it be something in ministry or some other area in which He created you to pursue excellence. During the course of your life it’s important to be open to being flexible; the ways you honor God as a young adult probably won’t look the same when you hit middle age, and likewise will probably shift again by the time you reach retirement age and then again by the time you reach old age. You’re not going to have the same tools you formerly possessed (not all of them, anyway). Sometimes that could mean staying in the same line of work but teaming with someone who still has the advantages of youth, while other times it means moving into something entirely different.
I urge you to pursue God’s calling for your life, knowing full well your skillset is likely to look very different at various periods in your life. Don’t waste time pining for the victories of yesteryear; press on to face the challenge God’s placed in your path today. There will always be something too big for you to do on your own, but there will never be something He charges you with doing that He doesn’t equip you to accomplish. He hasn’t stopped being faithful to you, and though your physical and/or mental limits have changed from what they used to be, honor Him with your best today.
Lately there’s been a beautiful stretch of weather where I live, but it’s not always this nice in August. The current low-humidity 70s and 80s are very nice, but once upon a time I worked in the field of residential construction, and I’ve had to deal with some nasty weather conditions.
I don’t even remember this dude’s real name, but everybody called him “Lumpy.” (The origin of the name, I think, had to do with some poorly mixed spackle or grout.) One hot August day Lumpy and I were working in Jersey somewhere, and it was time to call it a day. We jumped in the company truck and got on Interstate 80 to drive back to Pennsylvania. Everything went fine for awhile, but we ended up running into a wall of red brake lights on the highway.
I stopped the truck and we just sat for a bit, waiting for the jam to start breaking loose. Only it didn’t. We just sat there, waiting. The truck idled so long the fuel gauge began dipping. Brake lights turned off as people put their cars in park and killed their engines. Eventually people got out of their vehicles and walked around.
Not knowing how long we’d be there, we shut off our engine, too. The cold air from the A/C stopped blowing, and rather than bake in a hot vehicle, we opened the windows and got hit with hot, humid air. As we sat there sweating, we saw people get out of their cars and go sit in the shade of the trees, either talking on their flip phones or Blackberries, lighting (or bumming) cigarettes, or wandering into the treeline to find an impromptu restroom. People rolled down their windows and began talking with complete strangers. Lumpy wasn’t the most talkative guy, so we just sat there, listening to the radio and waiting for something to happen. What else could we do? We were powerless to get ourselves out of the situation.
I don’t know how people sensed movement, but at some point they started getting back in their cars. The brake lights turned on again as they cranked engines and put cars into gear. I can’t think of many times I was more relieved to see a traffic jam start to move again. I was psyched to hit 30 mph. I have no idea what snarled traffic so badly, but we made it back without further incident.
Sometimes you find yourself in a period of waiting, where all you can do is watch beyond-your-control circumstances play out. They are agonizing at times, often emotionally draining. This example is much more lighthearted than what a lot of other people have to deal with, but it illustrates the concept that sometimes God just wants you to wait. Maybe it’s to teach you to rest in Him, maybe it’s to force you to deal with something you’ve been avoiding. It could be a time where something’s being prepared for later. I know it’s hard. Sometimes it’s really hard. This is one time I can’t provide much insight, as God’s purpose in making you wait could be tied to any number of reasons. Spend time in the Word and in prayer, listen with everything you’ve got to what the Lord may be saying to you, and look for ways to make the most of this unusual season. I don’t know when it will be over, but seasons don’t last forever.
After expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God posted angels with flaming swords near its perimeter to ensure they didn’t come back in. Ever wonder why?
The most obvious answer is as a consequence of their disobedience. God warned them what not to do; since they disobeyed, He had to impose consequences.
But an often-overlooked reason relates to what could still happen if humans got back in. The only limitation God put on the original pair was to avoid eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They obviously missed the mark there, but the Garden still had a very special tree whose fruit would catastrophically affect fallen humans: the Tree of Life.
“And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” – Genesis 3:22
Genesis isn’t terribly clear on whether they ate from the Tree of Life before they sinned, but it’s probably safe to assume they did at some point (how could you not try everything the Garden has to offer?). I can’t honestly say I understand what happens when sinless humans eat that tree’s fruit, but it would be a pretty big deal if an imperfect, sinful human ate from it. The verse above makes it pretty clear they’d be preserved in a sinful state forever. Christ still died for them/us, but without death, how can we ever be restored to true life?
In His infiniteness, God could doubtless still make a way to redeem them, but He chose, in His mercy, to prevent anyone from reaching the tree in the first place.
Still can’t get over the loss of that tree? Don’t worry, we’ll have access to it in the future: Revelation 22:1-3a notes “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed.” Don’t worry; you’ll get your shot at that tree (and its 12 different kinds of fruit) someday!
In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. military extensively used the UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. Better known as the “Huey,” it gained widespread fame in Vietnam for its ability to carry troops in and out of battle and conduct medevac missions in hot combat zones.
Huey (foreground) and Blackhawk (background)
The venerated chopper has served its nation reliably since the 1950s, but it doesn’t have the best safety record when it has to make a hard landing. It doesn’t have many safety features to help occupants survive a crash. In the 1970s, a new helicopter came on the scene: the UH-60 Black Hawk.
Versions of the Black Hawk are still widely in use in today’s military. It’s larger, smoother, tougher, and more versatile than the Huey. It also has some safety features built in to help protect the crew from hard landings.
In 1993, U.S. Special Forces served in the African nation of Somalia to intervene in a situation where local warlords were taking advantage of a severe famine. On one particularly bloody October day, local fighters were able to shoot down a U.S. Black Hawk chopper during a military operation in the capital city of Mogadishu.
The pilot, Mike Durant, was the only survivor of the crash. The impact knocked him unconscious, but when he came to, he was surprised to find that he could no longer see over the “dashboard” of the helicopter. As it turns out, the front seats in the Black Hawk were designed to withstand a certain amount of force, after which they’d progressively collapse to the floor. This safety feature was intended to spare the seats’ occupants from absorbing all that force with their own bodies. By building the structure of the seat this way, the large amount of force that would have been transferred directly into Durant’s spine got dissipated enough to allow him to survive. The crash still broke his back, but he eventually recovered (despite being captured and held hostage) and returned to duty. The events of this operation are depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”
The front seats in a Blackhawk are designed to absorb a portion of the force in a crash landing
Nowhere in scripture are Christians promised a life free of hardship. On the contrary, we will be hated and made fun of, and our lives can quite possibly be made more difficult by announcing our religious convictions to the world. The heat will get cranked up and all will get to see what our faith is really made of.
In those times, sometimes we’ll be made to bend, but not break. Other times we’ll be broken, but not killed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God never gives us more than we think we can bear; yes, that happens to people. The tough times I’ve been through pale in comparison to what some others have endured, but it seems like God’s purpose of the pain, the “why,” is never apparent during the pain. It also seems, however, that He designs situations in such a way that parts of you, or perhaps parts of your character, are protected while others crumple and break around you. When it’s over, the parts that He didn’t want are broken and have fallen away and the parts that are left are the parts that He still wants to be there. It may very well be that He arranged that set of circumstances specifically to refine your character or your outlook on life.
If you’re going through something really hard right now, hang in there. It won’t always be like this.
If you look at how the Bible says the world ends, one of the key components is a one-world government that’s run by a very charismatic and charming fellow that ends up running an authoritarian regime.
While I believe this prophecy is inevitable, it’s impossible to know a lot of the things that will happen between now and then. Just by looking around at how our country’s going, it seems like people are all too eager to grant more power to the state at the expense of individual freedom, which only makes it easier to be subsumed into a one-world government later.
Ever notice that undefended viewpoints tend to be ignored? If Christians don’t speak up about their beliefs, those beliefs will more quickly be overrun by some kind of legislation, executive order, or social branding. In many cases they’re already on their way. It’s not the job of thought leaders, pastors, missionaries, or some kind of religious professional…it’s yours. You should spend time with people that are not believers. (How else will you influence the world for Christ?) You may be the only Christian in your social circles. If that’s true, you may be the only live link to Jesus those people ever see.
I once heard someone discussing an unrelated topic. Whatever she was discussing wasn’t a mainstream viewpoint, but she wanted to get the perspective out in the public sphere. She said she wanted to talk about it because “talking about it normalizes it.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. So then, in all the commentary and opinion that passes for news today, you probably don’t hear a whole lot that agrees with your worldview. The focus should primarily be Christian, but there are a few others thrown in. Maybe it’s up to you to talk about, and thus “normalize” your viewpoint. Here are a few examples:
“I am a Christian and I try to model my life off Christ’s teachings in the Bible. That is my choice, and it is a right guaranteed to me as an American in the United States Constitution.”
“People can identify with whatever gender they wish and pretend their chromosome combination doesn’t affect biological reality, but they can’t force me to play along with it. My right to freedom of religion (which includes embracing truth over lies), guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in America, trumps their desire to strong-arm others into seeing the world as they do.”
“Schools should ensure their students get really good at reading, writing, and arithmetic before they look to broaden their scope into other areas.”
“If you look closely at them, ‘Greenism,’ ‘Wokeism,’ and ‘Stateism’ are all structured in a remarkably similar fashion to the way religions are. They should be subject to the rules of separation of church and state as much as any other religion is.”
“Science and Christianity complement one another. There are many areas of science to explore, but if you consider the system of bytes of data (which relies on ones and zeros to denote characters), it’s tough to imagine a system like that just evolving itself into existence. It had to be designed. How much more unlikely, then, would it be for DNA to arise spontaneously? Consider the complexity of DNA, the fact that it reads four characters instead of two, how every three base pairs specifies which one of 20 amino acids to link to the last one, and that these chains of amino acids can link together to form proteins that serve different functions in life. There are actually people who believe this system, more complex than, say, 90% of our most complex technology, started from nothing (even before bacteria came along), but they refuse to even entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, someone actually designed the system.
This is the most important one on the list. “It’s easy to divide people. What do you say we take a look at who’s trying to unite them? Christ came for the criminals, the law-abiders, the young and the old, uneducated and scholars, men, women, people that looked like Him, people that came from far-off lands, the rich, and the poor. We therefore cannot be selective about with whom we share the Gospel.”
If you’re a Christ-follower, the world is going to align itself against the way you think. That doesn’t mean you need to roll over and get steamrolled. Standing your ground in the face of opposition may be exactly what causes an unbelieving onlooker to reconsider their position. If this is an idea you find difficult to agree with, you’re making it that much easier for opposing viewpoints to engineer the terms of your suppression. Don’t be afraid to push back.
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. –Eph 6:13
I can’t speak much for other parts of the world, but in the United States of America, turning 18 is kind of a big deal.
This is the age when you transition from being a minor to being an adult. Before turning 18, you’re still considered too young to have a firm understanding (or insufficient life experience) to be grounded enough to make good decisions.
I mean, think about it. There are some exceptions, but for the most part you can’t do these things before turning 18:
Get a tattoo or body piercing
Vote
Rent an apartment or buy a house
Join the military
Get married
The intent behind making it mandatory for a minor to turn 18 before being able to make the decision to embark on any of these things is because they all carry a certain weight or have long-lasting consequences. Many of these, after all, are life-altering decisions.
So you’ll understand if I express my disapproval that in many parts of the U.S., it’s easier for an 11-year-old to obtain gender reassignment surgery than it is to get a tattoo. (No, I’m not advocating that we lower the minimum tattoo age.) It is disturbingly easy to empower children to set off on a journey of permanent change without them having a firm grasp of the ramifications they’re agreeing to live with. Even if you’re a pro-trans activist, I think you’d have to agree with me on some level up to this point of the posting.
Let’s call a spade a spade here: we’re talking about mutilating children’s natural body parts and acting like it’s somehow archaic if we do not give them the opportunity to alter the course of their natural lives. I’m sorry, but if you can’t even get tattoos at that age, the government shouldn’t be allowing people under 18 to pursue such permanent reassignment surgeries.
Switching gears slightly, I have to ponder…given the prevalence of this issue in the national spotlight today, one would think there’s a tremendous amount of pent-up demand among minors. I’m not ready to hit the “I Believe” button on that issue, but for the sake of argument, let’s suppose it’s true for a moment. As responsible adults, it’s up to people on both sides of the aisle to say “hey look, I recognize there’s a lot of demand for this, but pursuing this course of action is a major decision, so we’re going to make you put it on hold until you’re legally an adult.” Why isn’t that an easy piece of legislation to get passed?
I don’t really believe there IS a lot of demand for this type of thing among kids. That begs another question. If that’s true and there’s no major demand, why such a big push for it? I mean, if politicians are making something out of nothing, what’s the political goal of such a thing?
I guess I’d have to pull in a few other things to round out the picture. “Protecting Women’s rights” does not include fairness for female athletes, and it seems that rather than create a separate category or class of athlete, the party line is that it’s in competition’s best interest to allow biological males (or those born biological males) to compete in Women’s sports. That’s just one additional item. Let’s open the aperture a little more.
It’s pretty scary how much traction the “Defund the Police” movement got within the past few years. I wouldn’t say the tide has completely receded, but I think it’s reached its high-water mark by now. The hypocrisy of the people with the loudest voices calling for such a defunding (hiring personal security details or building walls around their homes) helps illustrate that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Kicking it up a notch though, is the District Attorney from Manhattan who announced recently he would no longer prosecute theft with the intent of establishing racial equity. (Ironically, this viewpoint justifies the use of racism to level the playing field.) What good can the police do if they catch someone robbing a home if that person is released from custody within hours?
Hang with me a little longer. Did you hear about this new mortgage situation? People with high credit scores, the ones that have made good decisions (you know, like “live within your means” or “pay your bills on time”) are now going to be required to pay extra fees to offset the risk associated with granting large loans to people with low credit scores. While I agree that homeownership creates a pathway to wealth, this is not the way to do it. This is essentially Communism by another name. “Everyone else deserves what you’ve worked hard for.”
Finally, the move from equality to equity. It doesn’t sound much different, does it? It’s only a change of two letters. It’s a gargantuan difference, though. I’m all for equality. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had it right. The person best suited for the job should get the job, whatever their background. Equity, however, means that the same outcome is desired across the board, so each person should be given whatever is necessary to empower them to achieve that result. I’m an out-of-shape white dude that’s over 40 years old. If I want to play in the NBA, equity says I should be given whatever it takes to ensure my success in that league. In games, there should be trampolines only I can use. Performance-enhancing drugs, officiating that goes in my favor, special rules…all should be on the table if we want equity.
To bring this to a close, it seems to me that all these viewpoints, with as little logical sense as they make, actually make quite a bit of political sense in one respect. If your goal is to tear down the existing system, these things will help you get there.
Now everybody knows that a nation of more than 330 million people can’t just burn down its government and let chaos reign. If you’re trying to topple the government that’s already there, you surely intend to replace it with something. And that, my friends, is the problem. In societies overrun with discontent and anger at those perceived to be hoarding resources, Communism has a very real chance at taking hold. Communism is second-to-none when it comes to political systems that cause large amounts of human suffering.
Whatever its faults, Capitalism rewards those that work hard. If there’s an inequality in the system (which, I will concede, there often is), the solution is to create more opportunities (as opposed to handouts) for those getting the short end of the stick, not punishing those flourishing.
If you’re roughly 45 years old or more, you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of Soviet Communism. You remember the harsh realities behind the Iron Curtain. Very little freedom. Very little food. God is abolished and replaced with the State and state-run religion. This is where we’re headed if the present culture of participation trophies and “I’m too stressed to work five days a week” prevails. Do not accept the notion of making the illogical acceptable. Get involved in local politics. Attend school board meetings. There are more of you than you might think, but most of them are thinking someone else will show up at the meetings.
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke
Easter is a little more than a week away. To help prepare for the season, I’d like to revisit a story I’ve told before, but it’s been a few years, so I can probably get away with it.
In the years after college I took up skydiving. It was lots of fun and a whole new type of experience. When you’re early in your skydiving career, there’s a lot of stress, thought, and mental preparation that goes into each freefall jump. It’s important to stay mentally calm so your body stays physically relaxed. If you tense up, it makes it difficult to control yourself in the airstream, and your body doesn’t maneuver the way you want it to.
One day I did a jump, and I don’t remember what the objectives were, but the freefall portion of the jump didn’t go well. Nobody got hurt or anything, but I was unable to achieve the goals I’d set for myself. For whatever reason, I had either raised my own expectations too high or I tensed up and started losing control of my ability to maneuver how I wanted to. When it came time, I opened my parachute and descended under canopy, fuming the whole time I floated to the ground.
When I finally touched down safely, I let that anger out. Draped in thousands of dollars worth of gear that had repeatedly saved my life, I couldn’t go too crazy on the chute or the rig, so I ripped off my helmet, yelling as I slammed it on the ground, then kicked it in frustration. Man, I was just seething with rage over something that I don’t even recall today.
Around Easter time, we sometimes hear the word “propitiation” in church. It’s usually referring to the idea that since God and sin are incompatible, and His holy wrath toward sin must be satisfied before we experience lasting peace, there has to be some kind of reckoning.
In my case, on that skydive, I took out my wrath on that poor, innocent helmet. After expending my rage, I stood there with gritted teeth, red face, and heaving shoulders. As I began getting myself under control, the wrath was spent, and the helmet had served as the object that took the punishment.
In God’s case, He had a choice. He could either demand ongoing sacrifices of unblemished animals from His followers, or He could implement a permanent solution. Back in Bible times, sacrifices were the means of satisfying God’s wrath against our sin…those sacrifices took our punishment on our behalf. Thankfully for us, He opted to go the second route. He sent Jesus Christ, His only son, to live among us. Living a spotless life without sin (the equivalent of an unblemished sacrificial animal), Christ died on our behalf, an innocent man dying the death of a criminal. Then, in what has to be one of the most indescribable emotions in the whole Bible, God turned His back on His own son, who then experienced our due punishment in our place.
Christ died on a Friday. That Sunday, He rose from the dead in victory, having satisfied God’s wrath and forever changing our relationship with God for the better. This is propitiation. Christ took our punishment for us so we could be spared from it.
So the next time you feel the urge to either punch a wall, punt the stupid playground ball that kid’s been bouncing, or throw your golf clubs into the water hazard, just imagine how much greater God’s wrath is, and be thankful that He’s enacted a plan that offers you a way to exempt yourself from it.
Dear Lord, thank you from the bottom of my heart for dying on the cross on my behalf. This Easter season, please help me remember the importance of what You’ve done not just for me, but for everyone, whether they accept Your gift or now. Please help me to live the way You want me to live, and share this good news with those around me. I pray in Your name, Amen.
When I was in my early teens I had a buddy named Cameron. If Cameron had a super power, it was anything that had to do with rubber bands. That dude had rubber bands stashed all over the house, and he was a crack shot with them.
The house where he lived had a skylight in the kitchen, and every once in awhile a fly would buzz around in there, looking for a way out. It seemed like he could always take those guys out on the first try. He also used rubber bands to make slingshots out of branches he found that were the right size/shape. If we had Instagram back then, we’d have been on it doing rubber band madness.
I’m not sure how it started, but at one point Cameron and I ignited some kind of playful feud with his dad. I was at their house like, all the time, so he was probably looking for a way to encourage me to spend less time there. I wasn’t quite “Steve Urkel” bad, but Cameron’s dad often referred to me as “the infestation.” He wasn’t too shabby with rubber bands, either, and on more than one occasion I had to dive for cover to try to escape the onslaught of flying rubber.
Again, the details are fuzzy, but one evening we anticipated that his dad was on the prowl and looking to light us up somehow. I’m pretty sure the “Home Alone” movies were fresh in our minds, and our heads were filled with ideas whose effectiveness was portrayed maybe a little too generously in the movies.
The way his house was set up, Cameron and his sister had the only rooms on the second floor, and the only other thing up there was a bathroom. He had sort of a cool setup in his room; the ceilings slanted down to the walls, so the room got shorter as you went away from the middle, but on the other side of the walls there was some storage space where the ceiling got uncomfortably short. It was a pain to get in there if you were the size of an adult, but it was great for us as kids. Our plan was to set up a bunch of alarms and traps out in Cameron’s room, and then let them stand guard while we set up a fort in one of the storage spaces so we could defend ourselves.
I don’t remember everything we set up, but I remember I brought some stuff from my house to help us out. I brought a tape player with a cassette tape cued up to a loud spot in a Michael W. Smith song, and I made a trigger out of a motorized Construx creation. I also know I brought a small chain and a bunch of metal jax. Cameron probably set up some kind of auto-rubber band crossbows aimed at the door. We strung a bunch of rubber bands together (I don’t think I can properly explain just how many rubber bands were in this house; it’s like Cameron asked for bags of rubber bands for his birthday and Christmas, and he got them) but we’d take these strings of rubber bands and pull them tight all across the room, fastening them to different things and making a sort of web. From one of them I hung the little chain, and I put the pile of metal jacks right under it, so if something disturbed the rubber band string that held the chain, it would fall onto the jacks and make a distinctive noise. The chain was barely hanging on to the string, so a false alarm wasn’t out of the question.
That wasn’t the big alarm, though. The big one was the tape player I mentioned. It was connected to a tripline that an intruder would set off, and everyone in the house would the loud guitar from the start of “Goin’ Through the Motions” if tripped. I don’t know what else we set up, but I’m sure there were other traps. Once we finished that, we shut off the lights and went to work in the storage space, rearranging boxes, garbage bags full of stuff, and strategically storing rubber band ammunition in various locations. If Cameron’s dad was coming for us, he’d either have to turn on the lights (giving himself away) or risk running through our field of booby traps.
Well, we were focused on the best way to set up a defense, and busied ourselves with strategy, plans, and fall-back areas. We had it all planned out. “The decoy dives over here while the other guy pops up and nails him from over here! When he pivots to focus on that guy, the decoy army crawls through this makeshift tunnel and hits him from the other side of the pillar! He won’t see it coming! ”
While we were making our grand strategy, we both thought we heard something out in Cameron’s room that sounded a lot like a little chain falling onto metal jacks. We both froze, wondering: 1. if we had actually heard something, 2. if it was a false alarm, and 3. now what?
Before we could do anything, Cameron’s dad burst into the storage space, filling the air with a hail of rubber projectiles. Surprised shrieks filled the room as we dove for cover but still got hit multiple times. There were so many rubber bands in the air at the same time, it’s like the guy had four arms with eight fingers and three thumbs on each hand, and they were all working on delivering stinging hits to the two of us. Well, we couldn’t mount any kind of coherent defense, and it was a massacre. Cameron’s dad shellacked us pretty good, and there was no denying who won that particular engagement.
You may have had a similar experience (in the metaphorical sense, at least). You recognize that you’re exposed to temptation from certain sins, and you’ve taken the precautions that you believe will be effective in keeping you safe. As it turns out, though, either your precautions didn’t work or something else went wrong, and you ended up not being as safe as you thought. Maybe you put your trust somewhere you shouldn’t have. Maybe you blocked a specific website but you found a different one you shouldn’t be visiting, or you stopped talking about people behind their backs, but now you disguise the gossip as a prayer request.
These things happen. You have to constantly check your defenses, taking frequent looks at your life to evaluate where you’re vulnerable. Things change rapidly; don’t rely on old measures that no longer reflect the modern vulnerabilities in your life. Know yourself and know what you have a hard time overcoming, and place countermeasures in your life that enable you to stand up to them. (In some cases, that requires a literal fleeing from the situation.)
Rubber bands can sting, but there are things that sting much worse. Set up the protections you know will help you be more effective in standing up to temptation.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. –Ephesians 6:12-13
