Glorying in the Biblical Safeguard

“Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.”

~Philippians 3:1 (NRSV).

I’ll often wonder if I’m covering the same old ground ad nauseam. And this was Paul’s point. The gospel preached well is the repeating of the same message — a message we need reinforced each day, with substance enough to keep us growing.

Even though I’m tempted to cringe at the oft-sameness of my writing I know I’m in God’s will to continue ‘as is’ and simply find as many angles as I can to hit this ministry of God from.

I’m liable to think you and I don’t need the safeguard — but we often do.

The Wisdom Being Safeguarded

This safeguard of preaching and hearing the gospel is good, but when it’s heard ‘repetitively’ — to the temptation of wearing out our welcome and perhaps getting bored of it all — we see the devil’s trick. In our right and wise minds we listen with obedient intent, clamouring past the thought of how, at times, ho-hum it is.

Obedience has about it the wisdom of acknowledging what we don’t always know; those things we’re told we should trust, in faith.

Safeguarding is important to all who are liable to going off course, into the nether regions of spiritual apostasy. That’s essentially all of us.

Once Safeguarded, Time to Rejoice

So, instead, we rejoice in the Lord. We thank God that we can have access to Paul’s message and the messages, too, of thousands of spiritual descendents through the eons, carrying the eternal flame of the gospel into each of our living rooms, head phones and book shelves.

Though we, at times, tire of the same old words — living and active words that are speaking to our temporarily dead spirits — these very same words are reviving us, even whilst we quietly blaspheme them within our thoughts via our momentary reticence to obey God.

Soon, despite our current spiritual languor, we will again be rejoicing in the Lord. This is because we’ll have been, once again, safeguarded in the Spirit; buffeted again by the wind of God’s eternal Spirit under our flailing wings.

Let’s face it, we need our daily dose of the biblical safeguard; without it our ‘wisdom’ sinks into the dissolving sand that was once solid rock in Jesus’ name.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.