Unguarded
It was somewhere in the first hour of watching the film Captain Phillips that my wife turned to me and said, “i just can’t believe the hubris of a large company like Maersk that it wouldn’t have armed security _ or some kind of security force _ for a tanker traveling through waters infested with pirates.”
Spoiler alert: Somali pirates hijack the ship.
In the film Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks plays the captain of a large container ship that travels through dangerous seas and is boarded by pirates.
As i watched the film i kept thinking about how the whole thing, in addition to my wife’s observation, was a mismatch: a huge ship being attacked by a small boat of pirates. It seemed like there was no way they should have been able to do that.
But they did. The shipping company was unguarded. Perhaps out of pride.
And sometimes our hearts get hijacked. We can be unguarded and proud.
The reality is we live in pirate-infested waters. All sorts of things will attack us in a given day; many of them sexual.
Yet, how often do we act as though this world is our true home? How often do we allow our hearts to become complacent or even prideful?
God told the Israelites not to get too comfortable in Canaan. He warned them about assimilating into that culture. In the New Testament we read about the early church and how Paul kept telling the churches he had planted to “no longer live as the Gentiles.”
Paul told the Ephesians to put on the full armor of God. That alone tells us what Paul thought about the reality of spiritual battle and the attack of the Enemy. We cannot afford to be caught unguarded.
Paul knew what was at stake: pirates infest the waters _ both then and now.
The warning is always needed. Put on the armor (Eph. 6:10-18); resist the Evil One (James 4:7); and fight as a true warrior of the Kingdom of God (Exodus 15:3).
Intentional Warriors 
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