15/05/2025
The watchmen
Except the Lord has determined to preserve the city, the watchmen cannot see or determine the threats, if the Lord has decided the city shall be overthrown. No amount of watchmen could preserve S***m. It represents a man made structure or system that’s an abomination to God that we have no business staying in.
As Jesus approached a storm of death, he asked the disciples to watch with him, but they preferred sleep and so abandoned him in his worst hour. Their slumber put them at risk of complete failure and abandoning the Lord when the pressure was on. Were they resting on some fleshly confidence despite Jesus warnings that he would be crucified?
Why was COVID not foretold by major prophets? If it was, I will eat humble pie. I didn’t feel warned that the world was about to change. I haven’t been able to reconcile yet why such a world event of crisis wasn’t blasted from the pulpits or even was an alarm in my own heart from the Lord that I perceived ahead of time? I am concerned that although my response was probably suitable, my alert ahead of time was not working.
“sleep on now and take your rest” Jesus told the disciples, when they wouldn’t watch with the Master Watchman. Jesus could see the storm approaching and was praying for strength to endure, yet others were oblivious.
Why is it that we panic in the physical storms, yet Jesus is asleep in our boat, and sleep through the demonic storm when Jesus is up watching and praying?
The whole concept of war and watchmen on the city walls means that we have to be alert and have a watch, but it’s also important to know if the Lord hasn’t determined to keep the city we aren’t going to be OK. There’s nothing the watchmen can do.
If the Lord has determined to keep the city, and the watchmen are asleep, we have a problem.
Or if the Lord has determined to keep the city, and the watchmen are awake but aren’t trained by the Master Watchman (Jesus) then the watchmen will miss important observations or treat every mouse as an emergency.
Another scenario is if the Lord has determined to keep the city, the watchmen are awake and trained, and see the danger approaching, but the army are asleep or untrained, there’s still going to be collateral damage.
Rather than being the bearer of bad news, it’s imperative to be encouraged to prepare ourselves to watch with Jesus, to be trained to watch, and what to respond to.
Prayer is important to prevent us ENTERING INTO temptation. We have lots of opportunity to fall for decoys and false information and also we can find ourselves trying to defend something that the Lord is wanting to remove. We can stay locked into some risky and belligerent behaviour that puts us in danger spiritually and also physically if we aren’t closely aligned with Jesus.
We need to repent for slumber and assuming we are automatically OK because we are Christians. No, we need to re-enlist for basic training and also cross check one another and allow ourselves to be cross checked in an exhortation to draw close to Jesus and be led by him daily.
Picking up our cross means we aren’t going to keep fighting to preserve the flesh, and also means to be on about Kingdom priorities which come at a cost to our own personal agenda and comfort levels, because those things lull us to sleep and make us deaf and blind to danger. Likewise by the Cross we aren’t going to be pulled on by clever strategies of Satan getting us to react to smoke and mirrors.