FROM THE DAWGHOUSE…
PREPARED, NOT PARANOID
Psalm 119:95-96
95 The wicked lie in wait to destroy me,
but I consider your testimonies.
96 I have seen a limit to all perfection,
but your commandment is exceedingly broad.
Just because you don’t see someone following you doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you!
On good authority here we see someone and in fact a lot of someones are out to get you.
Wicked people are out to take God’s people down. That’s not being paranoid. It’s what the Bible says is true.
Evil people motivated by Satan want to bring you down. Especially they want to bring God’s men down. And Satan has an unknown numbered army (but God knows) deployed against us. It must be a large army given how much wickedness is seen in our big country as well as in evidence all around the globe.
The New Testament supports this Psalm by the way:
1 Peter 5:8-10
8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.
The Psalmist tells us to always have our “head on a swivel” because evil can strike at any time. The way to be prepared and not paranoid is to be constantly and internally refreshed by God’s “testimonies”, aka in Psalm 119 in many other names:
Laws, precepts, commandments, righteous judgments, statutes, word and ordinances.
Be prepared, not paranoid today as you head out to work!
Risen Lord Jesus Christ, today as I go out into your world I pray that you would enable me to remember that You’re in charge and that You faced Satan all the time and you faced him down! So I fill my mind with Your testimonies now so I’ll be prepared to see untruth when I encounter it and winsomely and kindly face it down. Give me that kind of wisdom today. And make me confident in You, not in myself. May Your testimonies make a confident man who cares for You and others! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Pete Alwinson
