The title of this blog entry was something that my high school baseball coach use to always say to us. Generally it was when we were not practicing as sharp and crisp as we should be. Those who know me are aware that I am a big Virginia Tech Hokie fan. Saturday was a painful day for me to watch my beloved Hokies. If you look at the teams on paper, Virginia Tech was clearly the superior team. They should have won this game with very little problem. However, if you turned on the television or pulled up the internet you found a headline that said something to the effect, “Sloppy play by Virginia Tech allowed the upset.” The headline was painfully accurate. From a fan’s perspective, and yes I do realize I never played college football, it looked as though the Hokies either didn’t take their opponent seriously, or they just weren’t prepared to play. They were playing the Pittsburgh Panthers. A team that had not won a game this year. They were not ranked among the top 25 teams in the country in football, and they were playing a team that was supposedly the 13th best football team in the country. Pittsburgh had nothing to lose. They were expected to lose and even if they won the game, they would still have a losing record, and so their season still wouldn’t be a good one thus far.
This reminds me a lot of Christians who fail to follow Paul’s advice in Ephesians 6:10-20. Paul instructs us to put on the “whole armor of God” in verse 11. I won’t breakdown every piece of armor here, but suffice to say that every piece of armor is vital. Why do we need to put on the whole armor of God? The end of verse 11 says, “that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” The word “wiles” means tactics. We need to put on the whole armor of God so that no matter how the devil decides to attack us on a given day, we will be prepared and able to stand it. The implication is this, whichever piece of armor you do not put on, is where you are susceptible to attack. In other words, you would be unprepared, exactly how the Hokies looked this past Saturday. We must also remember that the devil is playing like he has nothing to lose. He already knows his eternal fate and that he can’t change that. So he is busy trying to take as many people down with him as he can.
The result Saturday was a loss for the Hokies. They dropped out of the top 25 as a result of this loss. They can bounce back from it and be okay and still have a good season. The results of you and I not being prepared can have far greater consequences. While we know the Bible teaches you cannot lose your salvation, you can be rendered ineffective and unusable as a consequence of sin. We see this in 1 Corinthians 9:27c that says, “lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” Against, Paul wasn’t saying you can lose your salvation. He is saying that you would be ineffective because you will have fallen victim to the devil’s tactics and be suffering the consequences. So let us remember, we have an adversary who has nothing to lose and knows where to hit us. That makes him very dangerous to the Christian who is not prepared. The solution is to put on the whole armor of God in preparation for the attack, move forward, and remember we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us!”
By His grace and through His strength, may we live for Him!
Good point