A Distracted Soldier is a Dead Soldier

One of my favorite TV shows is The Unit. It’s about a special ops team within the Army who don’t officially exist. This show is a great mix between a war story and real life drama. Plenty of shooting and blowing stuff up, good times with comrades and family, and problems at home. The wives of The Unit pretty much stick together and take care of each other while the men are deployed. They don’t want their husbands worrying about them while they’re in a fight because “a distracted soldier is a dead soldier.” This saying holds true for the spiritual war we fight on a daily basis.

Justin Taylor of The Gospel Coalition recently wrote an amazing article explaining the dangers of being distracted, of allowing constant diversion into our lives. In this post, he mentions much of what Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) has to say about this issue.

One of the Pascal quotes:

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Think about that for a minute. When was the last time you went home, turned off the TV, turned off the cell phone, turned off the laptop, and sat in silence for longer than about .03 seconds? I know I haven’t done that in ages, if ever. Sure, I may do those things while reading a book, which is good and edifies me (because much of what I read is Theology or Christian philosophy). But it’s still a distraction in the sense that it allows me to avoid facing what comes to the surface of my heart when I shut out the external noise. What am I afraid of? Do I really believe that there is something in my heart that God doesn’t know about, or that the gospel can’t defeat? The reality is that whatever is there, I don’t want to fight it. So, I distract myself in any way possible, and allow myself to die in the process. A distracted soldier is a dead soldier.

Now, yes, Christ has already breathed life into me, and nothing can take that away. What is at stake is my ability and effectiveness at fighting the “good fight”. One of the easiest ways to win a fight is to cause a distraction. Cause a person or group of people to focus in one direction, and then attack them from another. So, while I’m allowing all these distractions, under the guise of good intentions…I want to focus on Twitter and Facebook in case Tim Keller or Matt Chandler tweet something profound. I want to leave my phone on in case someone calls because they need to talk…but by continuing to allow myself to be distracted by Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and phone calls (thank God I can’t play Words With Friends!), I am preventing, or prohibiting, myself from seeing the battlefield clearly. In the name of wanting to be a “good leader” and be “available” for my friends, I’m actually keeping myself from dealing with what’s in my heart, and furthermore, I’m not able to actively press in and pray for them like I should. In effort to be available to know what’s going on in people’s lives, I’m stopping myself from seeking the Spirit who knows everything about their lives (and mine too!).

I’m not saying the solution is deleting Facebook or Twitter, or blocking text messages, but that there in order for us to FOCUS, there has to come a time when we sit silently and deal with what God reveals to us in that silence. It’s hard, yes. It’s terrifying, yes. Some of us may even echo the sentiments of Jesus before He endured the cross, begging God to let this fight pass from us. Yet, just as the Spirit gave Jesus the strength to endure the cross, He will give us the ability to face the depths of our hearts and watch the live-saving, life-transforming power of the gospel defeat the depravity that rests so deep within us, making us more like Christ.

For your sake, for the kingdom’s sake, for the sake of your loved ones, shut out the distractions. Fight the fight. Don’t let diversion kill your effectiveness in this war.

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