Be Vigilant

I had this striking dream once. In it, I was in our home and my husband, Brandon, was at work. Suddenly, I realized a well dressed man was sitting outside our house in a nice truck just watching. I believed he was going to try to break in, so I ran through the house as quickly as possible, making sure all the doors were locked, then tried to call for help. I looked out the window but the truck was gone. In its place was a small car with two young women in it. They too were just sitting there watching the house, laughing and waiting for the right time to make their move. I was in a panic trying to get ahold of the police or Brandon, anyone who could help, convinced we were about to be robbed. As I saw them sitting there laughing at my panic and my attempts to protect our home, I realized instinctively that they weren’t after my things at all, they were after our kids. At that moment I woke up. As I was lying there, relieved that what seemed so real was a dream, I heard the Spirit say,“They are. They’re after your children. So be vigilant.”

And that was it. I was still shaken by the dream and trying to process what I had felt God saying to me when I told Brandon about it later.

It was sobering and a little scary to have something so clearly spoken to me, especially in the form of a warning over my children. No matter how good intentions are, it is hard to be at the top of my game when it comes to “mommying”. I want to make sure their meals are nutritious, their teeth are brushed, that they have good manners, that they’re being read to enough, getting the right amount of sleep and so on. And on. And on. That’s just the tip of the iceberg really. Then take that and add all the things vying for their attention. The things that are dressed up nice and fancy and don’t look bad. The people in that dream were clean cut, fancy. They looked harmless, too innocent to hurt anyone, but they were there for my kids.

There is a real and true enemy out there. He is after our kids. He knows that God has plans for those young lives that are greater than the best things that we can imagine, but he has a plan too. The enemy knows the desire of a Godly parent’s heart is to raise their kids to follow wholeheartedly after God, so he disguises his plan. He makes it look innocent and fancy and harmless. The enemy takes what is abnormal, unimaginable, and dangerous and makes it look normal, he makes it socially acceptable. He dresses it up like a cartoon or a game or a colorful storybook and puts it in their path. He’ll make it their best friend’s favorite show so we’ll think it’s ok. He doesn’t expect us to screen it. He’s hoping we’ll overlook his subtlety and our kids will end up playing it and dreaming about it and humming its theme song. He’s hoping we’ll decide it’s not worth the fight and that we’ll have good intentions of being more strict when they’re older because we believe that’s when things can get really bad. He’s hoping we won’t realize that they can be hooked by that point. That they can be so desensitized to right and wrong that the voices he’s feeding them will drown out our own. That nothing short of a miracle will pull them off the path we let them start down when they were six. Or four. Or two.

Not long after I had that dream, my husband Brandon had one that struck us both. In it, our family was getting into our truck when out of nowhere a pack of dogs surrounded it. We were trying to wait them out when one of the kids cracked open the door and one of the dogs started fighting his way into the truck, trying to attack the kids. Brandon jumped into the backseat and started hitting and pushing the dog, trying to protect the kids. In his dream he yelled, “This is a vicious dog”. When he woke up, he knew it was of God. Between our two dreams, we could see God was speaking to us.

1 Peter 5:8 says “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

What could vigilance mean? Saying no to the movie or the television show. Brace yourself for a fight if you have to, but don’t let them play the game. Be prepared for whining, but get them out of bed and into a church pew on Sunday morning. Ignore the voices that say “a little bit is ok” or “it’s just a cartoon, it can’t hurt anything.” If you have to pull them from the activity because it’s keeping them from church or making them too tired to participate in family devotions, do it. If you have to hide the iPad or unplug the game system, don’t wait until tomorrow. If it takes canceling cable, or Netflix, deleting YouTube, or it means they miss the newest episode of their favorite show, take the heat and do it. It might even mean we have to put our phones down and paying attention to what they’re seeing. It could take us shutting our own favorite shows off because even if they’re not watching it with us, we’re allowing something unholy into our home…paving the way for them to do the same.

Our kids are too precious for us to be lazy. They have too much destiny for us to let things slide. Take authority over them.

Watch out for that lion.

He’s vicious, be vigilant.