“The Trenches of Life!” 1 Peter 3: 13-22 Key verse(s): 16:“. . . keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”
If you don’t want to be shot at, don’t supply your enemies with the ammunition! Sounds like pretty simplistic advice on the surface of it. But, when you think about it, it really needs our closer attention. If you don’t want people sniping at you, trying to bring you down by their sharp tongue’s, you need to get off the defensive and get on the offensive. Sitting in the trenches and allowing the “enemy” shells to simply fall around you is a real crap shoot. There’s no telling when the one with “your name on it” is already being loaded in someone’s cannon.
I like to watch war movies. Over the years I have watched dozens of them. One of the things that I have consistently noticed in that watch is this. No matter how realistic the movies attempt to be, they seldom have the time and resources to cover what happens prior to the attack or invasion. Movies need to fit neatly within a two to four hour attention span of the average viewer. If the script writer tried to cover everything that was essential to the story and its “total” telling, there just wouldn’t be enough space on the reel. For example, when you watch a movie about D-Day and the invasion of France by the allies in World War II, you very seldom if ever get to see some of the vital things that occurred prior to and during the invasion that helped it succeed. One such event was the bombing of the enemy’s fuel and ammunition dumps just prior to the landings on the beaches. The Allies took out dozens of critical German supply and ammunition depots in a six-hour period. They so severely damaged the German fuel supply that reinforcing their coastal defenses became nearly impossible along some parts of the line. By denying the Germans critical fuel and ammunition supplies, the Allies were able to make their offensive work under some very adverse conditions. The charge up the beaches would not have been possible without this kind of interdiction. What had started as an offensive would have resulted in a defensive struggle for the Allies.
If you don’t want people throwing rocks at you, you need to make sure that their supply of rocks is limited in the first place. The sooner they run out of ammunition, the sooner you can stop being on the defensive and start taking the offensive. Are you lying in the trenches of life right now ducking your head every time someone
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