Complacent, Apathetic or Alert?

We prayed to our God and stationed a guard 

to protect against them both day and night. 

Nehemiah 4:9 

 

Today's verse was written while Nehemiah and a remnant of the Jewish people had returned to a destroyed Jerusalem in order to rebuild it.  But as they went about rebuilding it, their enemies decided this was not a good idea and would attack the workers and then re-destroy the work that had been done. Lot's of people would have decided that rebuilding the city was just not worth it, and would have gone back into captivity.  But God had told Nehemiah to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and Nehemiah was going to do just that even if he had to do it all by himself.

 

 When I was in the Army (HOOAH), one of my grunt duties was pulling guard duty.  Most of the time guard duty consisted of hiding in the brush, getting chewed up my bugs and critters, dealing with the weather conditions, just so no one would pass into the camp without permission....pretty much routine boredom broken only when someone came to relieve you.  I even had decided to earn a little extra cash by taking someone else's watch for a small fee.  I did this so often that I had a nice chunk of change and had gotten very complacent.  When my Sergeant found out, he made it a point to enter my perimeter without permission and put an end to my little enterprise.

 

 Let's think about something for a moment.  Why would they pray to God AND station a guard? So we don't grow complacent!  We have seen this in the news more and more of late, people getting killed in churches, theaters, at gas stations, at grocery stores...the physical threat is very real and we need to be on our guard.  BUT what about the movies we watch, what about "I'm too tired to discipline my kids", what about "If the store gave me too much change, too bad for them", what about "everything's going my way so why pray."  

 

We, as a society and as Believers, have become complacent!  We have not only let our guard down, we have fired our guard because "it can't happen to me."  And when something bad DOES happen, what do we say? "How could God let this happen to me?"  Hmmmm.....