Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
II Timothy 2:3-5 “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life: that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a solider. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.”
Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
In his book, “44 Days of Faith and Valor: A Warrior’s Daily Devotional,” Police Lieutenant General Cesar Hawthorne R. Binag writes the following:
“As soldiers, dutiful obedience should be second nature to us. It’s ironic that some of us Christians in the military or police don’t have a problem with obeying our (human) officers and commanders; yet we refused to obey God. We obey our commanders because they can punish us – make us do push-ups or cancel our VOCO passes which allow us to go outside the camp for leisure and other reasons.
How low, therefore, is our view of God; and how little our respect for Him is when we fear our officers more than we fear Him: when we would not dare disobey our officers’ orders but would blatantly disobey His Word and instructions in the Bible.”
General Binag points out a great flaw in the thinking of a Christian solider that applies to all of us. We are regularly tempted to place everything else as a priority above the Lord, especially those things whose immediate nature seemingly drowns out the eternal nature of the things of God. We so easily forget that God’s thoughts towards us are directed towards His long-term plans and are filled with glory, peace, and grace. For that we should be immensely and eternally grateful.
We often entangle ourselves with the affairs of this life, tending to the things of this world instead of the things that far outlast this world, and it must not be so!
PLEASE PRAY FOR AMERICAN CHRISTIANS TO ALWAYS PRIORITIZE THE LORD OVER ALL OTHER SOURCES OF AUTHORITY. That type of dutiful obedience is what He deserves and what our loyalty should demand.
