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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Hi, this is Robert Jeffers, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, how is your situational awareness? That's not only a question for first responders, it's a question that all of us need to ask. How aware are you of the testing situations you find yourself in?
How aware are you of what is really happening around you? You say, well, Pastor, that's a stupid question. I know what's happening around me. Do you? Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr.
Robert Jeffress. You know, whether we're merging onto the highway, walking into a room full of people, or just going about our daily life, it's important to stay alert to the activity around us. And today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffers teaches that in the same way, awareness to danger is vital to thriving in our walk with God. But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.
Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. This week, I've introduced our next series to the airwaves. It's called Courageous: 10 Strategies for Thriving in a Hostile World. In my lifetime, I've never witnessed so much overt mockery of the Christian faith. Undoubtedly, you've experienced a measure of pushback from friends and family members, too.
And when these moments come, Christians cannot afford to let fear surrender to hostility. I've written a best-selling book to help you, and I'd be pleased to send a hardback copy to your home when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. It's called Courageous, 10 Strategies for Thriving in a Hostile World. We are living in a moment when boldness is not optional. It is essential.
If Christians like you and me surrender to the real enemies that surround us, we fail in our God-given mission to share the hope of Christ with a desperate world. That's why I wrote Courageous. Containing 10 biblical survival strategies to help you stand firm and live victoriously, no matter what comes against you. When you make your first gift as a new pathway partner or give a generous one-time donation to Pathway to Victory, I want to send you this book personally. It's my gift to you because the world needs you to be courageous.
Plus, when you respond today, I'll also include 10 exclusive encouragement cards.
Okay, right now let's focus our attention on God's Word as we gain confidence from the wellspring of truth. I've titled today's message, Survival Tip Number Two, Gain Situational Awareness. In the early hours of June the 30th, 2013, 43-year-old Eric Marsh. Superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots emerged from his sleeping bag at Prescott, Arizona's fire station number seven. He brewed a pot of coffee, which he drank black.
There's no milk or sugar on the fire line, so why get used to any other kind? he would often say. Carrying his steaming mug, Marsh walked into the ready room where his tight-knit team of wildland firefighters met every morning. Tacked on the wall behind him was a poster. That featured devastating pictures of wildfire fatalities in which skilled firefighters.
Had been caught off guard while battling small wildfires. that escalated unexpectedly. In ominously large letters, the poster asked, How is your situational awareness today? By 5:15, most of the crew had gathered in the ready room. We've got an assignment to Yarnell, Eric Marsh said.
It's 300 acres and burning on the ridgetop in thick chaparral. It's going to be hot. Real hot. By 5:40, Marsh and his crew of 19 firefighters His kids, as he referred to them, Loaded their two fire trucks and headed toward the small town of Yarnell, about an hour south of Prescott. Once on the fire line, Marsh set his team to work while he scouted out the fire.
Noticing a shift in the weather, He sent one of his firefighters back down the mountain to serve as a lookout in case the fire pivoted. It did. The firebrake his men had been cutting was suddenly compromised.
So they had to retreat. The radio crackled, asking if the Granite Mountain hotshots were okay. They were. They had reached the black. an island of ash that the fire had left the day before.
The brush had already been incinerated, robbing the fire of fuel, making it the safest possible place they could be. Then the fire pivoted again and raced downhill toward Yarnell, threatening homes and ranches. Eric Marsh decided to lead the safety of the black in hopes of saving some of the homes. He couldn't have imagined that by heading for town, he was leading his crew toward a series of increasingly compromised circumstances, each one more desperate than the last. A reporter later wrote.
As the firefighters hike down the mountain, The raging wildfire became obscured by a ridge line. Without eyes on the fire, Marsh had a decision to make. Bail off to his right and head for the safety of the desert floor 2,000 feet below. or continue toward Yarnell in hopes of saving homes. He decided to continue toward Yarnel.
Descending an additional 500 feet through thick chaparral, Marsh and his team found themselves in a basin. walled in on three sides by granite boulders. This was an extremely dangerous place. because it offered no means of escape. Just then the worst happened.
They heard the roar of flames that had been obscured by the ridge line. Through the smoke, Marsh saw the fire ripping up the hill toward them. They were trapped. Eric Marsh and 18 of the firefighters with him. died in that basin.
The most wildline firefighters ever killed in a single incident. Their bodies were found under fire shelters. Small aluminum tents meant to protect firefighters from extreme heat. but not from direct claims. The fire had burned over them so quickly And with such intensity that the massive granite walls of the basin.
cracked like eggshells. After the fire, Marty Cole, a friend of Eric Marsh and the safety officer on duty. stood among the charred bodies of the Granite Mountain hotshots. What were they doing here? he wondered.
Eric was too good of a wildland firefighter to have led his men into this situation. But he did. You and I will probably Never face. fiery inferno Of a wildline brush fire of 300 acres coming toward us. like Eric Marsh and his men did that day.
But nevertheless, you and I are surrounded, it seems like on every side by fires that are racing toward us, threatening to destroy us. From one direction. We have the fires of culture racing toward us that threaten to consume everything we hold valuable and dear in our faith. From another direction, we have the fire of Satan's tests and temptations in our life. The Bible says we have an adversary, the devil, who prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
And then, in another direction, we face challenging circumstances in our family, in our work, in the world in which we live. And if that were not enough, from another direction come the attacks from our very own sin nature that wages war against us and wants to pull us away from God. We are, in many ways, in a situation where there seems to be no escape. How can we ever survive those kinds of ordeals?
Well, in our series titled Courageous, We're looking at 10 survival tips, if you will. To not just survive, but thrive in the hostile environment in which we live right now. And last time, we began looking at the first of those survival tips. Remember what it is? Don't panic.
Every first responder knows that if you're in a threatened situation, you cannot. Panic. You've got to gain control of your emotions. As God told Joshua in Joshua 1: be strong and courageous. The second Tip is the one that we're going to look at today to survive and thrive in threatening situations, and that is gain situational awareness.
The question that hung over Eric Marsh's shoulder in that ready room every day is a haunting question. How is your situational awareness? That's not only a question for first responders, it's a question that all of us need to ask: How aware are you? of the testing situations you find yourself in. How aware are you of what is really happening around you?
You say, well, Pastor, that's a stupid question. I know what's happening around me. Do you? Do you really understand the situation you're in? You know, the single greatest enemy of situational awareness.
is denial, and we all engage in it. When we substitute what we wish were happening, for what is actually happening. I saw a good illustration of that a couple of years ago. I got a call to come down to the news studio immediately to comment on a breaking news story. You may remember it.
A gunman had positioned himself in a hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he began opening fire on concert goers below him. And it was interesting, those who were attending the concert heard the gunfire. But they assumed it was Fireworks going off. Even though there was no sign of fireworks in the sky, even though people were dropping around them, hit by gunfire, they substituted what they wish was happening instead of what was actually happening. And by the way, before you're critical of them, realize we all have a tendency to do that, to practice denial of what is really happening.
For example, we read about the rise of online harassment and cyberbullying among adolescents, and we say, oh, well, that's not that big of a deal. It's just normal teenage behavior. Or we look around and we observe our First Amendment rights as Christians being threatened. We deny that's really what is happening. We say, well, that's just the culture in which we live.
Or we hear pastors, religious leaders saying, you know, there's really more than one way to heaven other than faith in Jesus Christ. We hear that, but we just assume, well, they're trying to be compassionate toward other people. But if we're going to survive the culture in which we're living, the situation in which we're living, we've got to see things the way they are. We've got to have situational awareness. And for that, we need.
Wisdom.
Now, wisdom seems to be in short supply today, doesn't it? Never have we lived in a culture before when there was such a shortage of wisdom. I mean, we can't even figure out. what a man is and what a woman is and who is either one. I mean, this gender fluidity is everywhere.
That's the culture in which we live.
Well, how do we gain situational awareness and know exactly what is happening around us? It begins with knowing what time it is. Knowing what time it is, you say, Well, it's about time for lunch, Pastor. That's not what I'm talking about. Turn over to 2 Timothy 3, verse 1.
Paul warned his protege Timothy about the coming moral and spiritual decline in the world. And this single insight is like a flashing caution sign for all of us. Look at 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. But realize this: that in the last days, difficult times will come.
Now, I want you to notice two phrases in this verse that are key to gaining situational awareness, to knowing what time we're living in. First of all, the phrase, the last days. In the last days.
Now, you may be thinking, well, people have been claiming it's the last day since the time of Christ. Pastor, are you saying we are living in the last days? Most definitely. We are in the last days. How do I know that?
The last days began the moment Christ ascended into heaven, into the Mount of Olives, after his first coming. Because before he ascended into heaven, he said to his followers, I'm coming back again. And the moment he ascended into heaven, the stopwatch started, the countdown to his return. You say, well, Paul thought Jesus was coming in his day, and that was 2,000 years ago. That's exactly right.
And guess what? We are 2,000 years closer to the coming of Christ today than we were back then. Every second that passes moves us closer and closer to that greatest event in human history.
So we are living most definitely in the last days. It's the period of time between the first and second comings of Christ. The second phrase to notice here is the word difficult. He says, know this, that in the last days, difficult time will come. The Greek word translated difficult only appears one other time in the Greek New Testament in Matthew 8, verse 28, when it's used to describe two demon-possessed men who could not be restrained.
They were extremely violent or difficult. That word difficult literally means without restraint. without moral restraint. What Paul is saying is, in these last days, before the Lord returns, it's going to be a time without any moral restraints. Isn't that a great description of the age in which we're living right now?
We need to gain situational awareness. You know, um I remember something Billy Graham said years ago. If you want to understand what is happening in the world today, you need two things. You need to have a newspaper in one hand. Today it would be your Facebook news feed.
But back then it was your newspaper in one hand, and you need to have a Bible in your other hand. The newspaper tells you what is happening in the world, but the Bible tells you what it means. If we're going to gain situational awareness and understand our world, we need both a newspaper and we need a Bible. You know, a great model of having situational awareness and why it's so important is found in an obscure verse in the Old Testament. Turn over to 1 Chronicles 12, verse 32, where we find a model of situational awareness.
1 Chronicles 12:32. As you turn there, I can see some. dust pooping up from your Bibles as you go back to 1 Chronicles. I stole that line from somebody, but it's a good one. Yeah.
1 Chronicles 12, 32.
Now look at this verse. And of the sons of Issachar, Men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do. Their chiefs were 200, and all their kinsmen were at their command.
Now, a little history here will help you understand why this verse is so relevant to us today. The sons of Issachar. Who was Issachar? Remember, Jacob had 12 sons. His ninth son was Issachar.
And before Jacob died, the patriarch of Israel. pronounced a blessing on his sons and predicted their future. And when it came to the ninth son, Issachar, Jacob said, You will be a strong donkey.
Now, if your dad said that about you, what would you think about that? Probably not take it as a compliment. But in Jacob's day, that was a compliment. But he went on to predict, not only that, you would find rest in a pleasant land. And that's exactly what happened.
Years later, when the Israelites actually conquered the promised land, they divided the land according to the sons of Jacob. And the sons of Issachar were given A small fertile tract of land between the Kishon and the Jordan rivers. The sons of Issachar became farmers. And to be an effective farmer, you had to be great in skills of observation. correlation and application.
To be a successful farmer, you had to study the weather and know what time it was. You had to know the condition of the soil. You had to be able to know when it was the right time to plant. and the right time to harvest.
Now the sons of Issachar were skilled in Observation, correlation, application. But that didn't just help them with agriculture. You see, the sons of Issachar were also keen observers of their culture. And the Bible says... They sensed unrest in the nation of Israel.
And they sensed that this was a time for David to expand his kingdom. They discerned there was such unrest in Israel, this was the time to anoint David as king over all Israel. And they were instrumental in helping him do just that. They understood not just the soil, they understood the culture. They understood their times, and the Bible says they knew what they should do.
And God says, if we're going to be effective for him in this world, we've got to be like the sons of Issachar. We've got to understand our time so that we can know what we should do. Have you ever heard people, Christians, who say, you know, I don't tune into the news very much. I don't read the newspaper. I don't watch television.
I just read my Bible and pray. I just kind of keep my blinders on so I don't get distracted by what's happening in the world. You know, there's a word that describes people like that. Stupid. If you're just reading your Bible and praying and have no observance of what's happening around you, you are stupid, stupid, stupid.
And God does not place a premium on stupid.
Some people think he does.
Some people think, oh, people who aren't aware of the world around them, they're so spiritual. No, they're stupid. Because they cannot know what they're supposed to do if they don't understand the culture in which they live. They need to be like the sons of Issachar. God didn't leave us here, ladies and gentlemen, just to take up space waiting for the rapture to come.
God left us here to make a difference in this world in which we live. And if we're going to make a difference, we've got to understand what's happening around us. God calls us to be salt and lied in this vicaying and dark world.
Now, let me give you a great illustration of this. Perhaps you've seen me talking about these pro-life bills that are coming from various states, challenging the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade law that has been in effect for 50 years and the Casey law since 1992.
Now, why are all of these pro-life bills springing up? Right now, is that by accident? No, it's not by accident at all. It is carefully planned out just as it should be. There were people, dedicated Christian men and women, who put their finger in the air and sensed that this was the perfect time to change that abominable practice of abortion.
We can save the precious lives of these innocent children who are being slaughtered on the sacrifice of convenience. That's because it's time for God's people to stand up right now and to do something and to speak out to protect the lives that God has created.
Now, that's what I mean. We've got to understand the situation in which we're in so that we can know what we should do. But the situational awareness I'm talking about is not only an awareness. Of our culture and the spiritual temperature of the nation as a whole. God wants us to ascertain.
The situation we're in right now, so that we can know individually as Christians what we're supposed to do. There's so much at stake in our culture today. Lives hang in the balance, and it falls to every follower of Jesus Christ to become bold for Him. Maybe you have fears about the economy or a family issue. Whatever the case.
God knows, and He's given you the tools to become bold and courageous. Let this be the year when you give deliberate attention to strengthening your resolve. Use this series and my book as a personal guide. My book is called Courageous, 10 Strategies for Thriving in a Hostile World. Many are reading my book in their morning devotional times.
In doing so, God is instilling a powerful dose of spiritual confidence as they apply His Word. When you request my book today, it'll come with 10 courageous encouragement cards that you can either carry with you or display in a visible place at home. Both my hardbound book called Courageous and the encouragement cards come with my thanks when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Thanks so much for standing with us. Your generous support allows us to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word.
Here's David to tell you more. When you give a generous gift to support the Ministry of Pathway to Victory, We'll say thanks by sending you a copy of the book titled Courageous by Dr. Robert Jeffers. Plus you'll receive a set of courageous encouragement cards to take on the go. Call 866-999-2965, or even easier, go online to ptv.org.
You can also text PTV to 78800. And when your gift is $75 or more, you'll receive the complete Courageous Leader Kit, which includes the book, the Personal and Group Study Guide, the Complete Teaching Series on DVD and MP3 format audio disc, and the Courageous Encouragement Cards. To request the Courageous Leader Kit, call 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org. You could also send your donation by mail, simply write to PO Box 223-609-Dallas, Texas, 75-222. Again, that's P.O.
Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, inviting you to join us again next time when Dr. Jeffers continues his message on survival tip number two. Gain situational awareness.
That's Wednesday, right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. What if your next vacation changed the way you read your Bible forever? Join me for nine nights sailing the Mediterranean with every detail taken care of.
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