The Silent Killer

This last week in the local paper there was an article title “’The Silent Killer’ is something to take seriously”. It was an article explaining the horrendous results of the heat of the summer. It gave a statistic that in 1995 in just Chicago, 500 people died due to the heat. While this surprised me the title is what grabbed my attention: ‘The Silent Killer’. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:11-12:
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (NIV)
I think so many times we forget what we are actually up against. So many times we lose focus on what is exactly going on around us. Jesus told us that “the enemy comes to steal, and to kill and to destroy,” so how do we forget that? Though I found it an alarming number of 500 people dying because of a heat wave, it’s hard to even put a number of people who are heading to an eternal heat wave that doesn’t give up. Yet we allow ourselves to get so distracted so easily about things in the church that really don’t matter when it comes to the big picture of things. There are people who walk by the church every day, people you come into contact with everyday, people who see our church building everyday who have no clue what they are truly heading for. If we are honest with ourselves ‘The Silent Killer’ is doing a great job in keeping God’s people distracted and busy about non-eternal things at times. Jesus said, “Feed my sheep and go and make disciples and baptize and do things for the least of these.” I would like to commit my life to become focused on these sorts of things – eternal things – rather than distractions from ‘the spiritual forces of evil’. How about you? Are you ready to take on ‘The Silent Killer’.