8-11-2024

Good Morning All,

     Matthew 24:43; “But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.”

    Personal security has been in the news a lot lately.  It seems like a daily event, where some corporation gets hacked, and our personal data is stolen. Yet most experts claim that the greatest weakness in the security wall is still the individual consumer.  We are so careless.  A few weeks ago, a young gal showed her driver’s license on Facebook.  She was proud she was 21 but someone mentioned that she was giving away a lot of personal information that is best kept private.  We get sloppy with passwords for accounts.  The most common passwords are 123456789 and 987654321 and “password”; not too tough to figure them out.  I watched a television special a couple of years ago.  They gave an acknowledged hacker three names of people who worked on the show in less than one day he had hacked all three of the people’s credit card accounts.  He did it all with public information that he found.

    It is similar to a story a number of years ago about a thief who broke into a number of houses in a community.  No one could figure out how he did it.  They finally got lucky, and someone watched him do it.  He simply looked under the welcome mat at the door and if he found a key, he let himself in.  We let ourselves be broken into by being careless with our information and our possessions.

    The same is true in our faith life.  We are careless about keeping the devil out.  We watch television shows, or go to internet sites, or go to businesses, or gossip with neighbors and soon find our lives infiltrated and covered in sin.  We think and say what we shouldn’t and sometimes we don’t even realize it until we are neck deep in despair.  We get careless with our faith.  We don’t guard it like we should and soon it becomes broken and weak.  We leave the key where the devil will find it and then are surprised when he opens the door and walks in and steals from us.

    The devil will steal anything he can from you.  He will rob the trust you have for others, he robs the comfort you have around others, he’ll rob the love you have for others but above all, he’ll rob you of your faith in God.  He will weaken it to the point that when you need it the most, it might crumble.

    We need to be on guard.  We need to avoid those things which weaken us.  We need to be vigilant about what we look at, what we read, where we go and who we talk to.  We know where we are weak and need to avoid them.  We then need to spend time in God’s Word and in prayer asking God to give us the strength to withstand the devil’s assaults and attacks.  We can’t fight the devil alone but with God’s grace we can prevail.

Father, help me to guard myself from the devil’s attacks.  Lead me to defend my faith by your mercy.  Guard me with your Spirit.  Be with those who are in battle right now that they may stand strong.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,                   

Pastor Bret