The title of this blog entry was something that my high school baseball coach use to always say to us.\u00a0 Generally it was when we were not practicing as sharp and crisp as we should be.\u00a0 Those who know me are aware that I am a big Virginia Tech Hokie fan.\u00a0 Saturday was a painful day for me to watch my beloved Hokies.\u00a0 If you look at the teams on paper, Virginia Tech was clearly the superior team.\u00a0 They should have won this game with very little problem.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 The headline was painfully accurate.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They were playing the Pittsburgh Panthers.\u00a0 A team that had not won a game this year.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Pittsburgh had nothing to lose.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
This reminds me a lot of Christians who fail to follow Paul’s advice in Ephesians 6:10-20.\u00a0 Paul instructs us to put on the “whole armor of God” in verse 11.\u00a0 I won’t breakdown every piece of armor here, but suffice to say that every piece of armor is vital.\u00a0 Why do we need to put on the whole armor of God?\u00a0 The end of verse 11 says, “that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”\u00a0 The word “wiles” means tactics.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The implication is this, whichever piece of armor you do not put on, is where you are susceptible to attack.\u00a0 In other words, you would be unprepared, exactly how the Hokies looked this past Saturday.\u00a0 We must also remember that the devil is playing like he has nothing to lose.\u00a0 He already knows his eternal fate and that he can’t change that.\u00a0 So he is busy trying to take as many people down with him as he can.<\/p>\n
The result Saturday was a loss for the Hokies.\u00a0 They dropped out of the top 25 as a result of this loss.\u00a0 They can bounce back from it and be okay and still have a good season.\u00a0 The results of you and I not being prepared can have far greater consequences.\u00a0 While we know the Bible teaches you cannot lose your salvation, you can be rendered ineffective and unusable as a consequence of sin.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 Against, Paul wasn’t saying you can lose your salvation.\u00a0 He is saying that you would be ineffective because you will have fallen victim to the devil’s tactics and be suffering the consequences.\u00a0 So let us remember, we have an adversary who has nothing to lose and knows where to hit us.\u00a0 That makes him very dangerous to the Christian who is not prepared.\u00a0 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!”<\/p>\n
By His grace and through His strength, may we live for Him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The title of this blog entry was something that my high school baseball coach use to always say to us.\u00a0 Generally it was when we were not practicing as sharp and crisp as we should be.\u00a0 Those who know me … Read More