Not Prepared

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Last night I stayed up until midnight watching the History Channel recaps of 9/11. I realized they were showing things and sharing things in these interviews that I had never heard or either never paid attention to before… so I couldn’t help but watch. I remember that day so very well. I remember that when I saw the second plane fly into the second tower, my heart stopped, and I said out loud, this is not an accident, we are under attack…  

From that day on to this day, I have never entered any public venue with the same carefreeness that I did before 9/11. I do not enter a ball field, a school, a church, a concert, a museum, an airport, a plant site, a government building, a hotel… nothing that contains more than a hundred people at a time, without checking my surroundings, scanning the faces, and making a plan as to what I would do if in that moment this building was targeted and attacked.

As I watched the last of the History Channel recap, Condaleeza Rice closed the interview with, for those is authority on September 11th, every day after that was September the 12th. How right she was… but this statement is not just true for those in authority that day in Washington, but it is true for every American that experienced and understood the full implications of it. Our country was changed forever that day. 

We simply were not prepared as a nation for this type of attack… it never occurred to us as a people, nor as a government… I mean, good grief, we were the land of the free and the home of the brave. People came to our country to escape terror, not to inflict it. Right?

I remember in the interviews, Rumsfeld shared how all of our nations defense missiles and radars were pointed outward for defense from an external attack… it had never occurred to our defense teams to prepare to be able to attack and defend our nation from an internal “civilian” attack.

As he said these words I thought about the church in America.

Our nation was founded by believers who were fleeing external persecution. Men and women from nations around the world heard of the freedom that existed in our nation and these men and women fled to our shores for safety and refuge. Here inside the borders of this great land, though not a perfect nation, not a perfect people, there was light- and there was freedom- and there was peace- and there was always hope.

We were free to worship our God with no fear of external attack. There would be no worries of beatings, imprisonment, or death… not even a real concern of shunning from the community if you named the name of Jesus and professed Him as your Lord and the Only Way to the Father.

We were protected from external attacks and so we lived… and then one day it seems that we didn’t just live… we went on about our own lives. The “church” changed. In our lack of concern of an external persecution we seemed to lose all need to pay attention to our inward condition. We forgot that we have an enemy within.

The attack on the American church is not an external attack… it is an inward attack. Individually within our own hearts and minds and also within the walls of our corporate congregations. The enemy has snuck in undetected, slithering right on in… and so many are not prepared.

  Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Jude 1:3-4

Across our nation we have church buildings full of professing Christians who base their theology on catch phrases instead of Scripture, who stand on traditions of men instead of the authority of the Word, who trust more in man’s imagination than God’s divine inspiration. Professing believers who are not prepared to stand… because they have built their house on the sand.

Within the walls of our congregation we find believers that are under attack within our own hearts and minds. We fight and suffer from depression, oppression, and suppression. All internal battles that cannot be defeated from any external weapon of man’s invention.

for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.

2 Corinthians 10:4-6

Are you prepared?

Are you aware of the schemes of the enemy within?

Are you on the look out?

Do you have your defense missiles and radar pointed inward so that you might examine and guard your own heart and mind as well as guarding the church that is in your house of worship?

Do you have a plan?

Are you prepared to protect and to serve the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 

Colossians 2:8

Are you prepared to make war with your own flesh, with your own sin, with your own ignorance?

Are you prepared to fight the lies of this world, of demons, even the lies of your own heart with the only weapon that wins, the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God?

in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephesians 6:16-17

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For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 

Hebrews 4:12

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