Spies and Jammed Signals
Your life depends on it.
For nearly all of human history, war has been a reality. For as long as war has waged, one of the most important ingredients of victory has been access to accurate, secure, and reliable forms of communication. Naturally, wartime enemies are therefore constantly trying to steal, disrupt, or destroy each other's communication methods and capacities. They do so because their lives depend on it.
In modern warfare, this can be extremely sophisticated. It certainly includes defensive strategies such as using secure networks and encrypting important messages. It also includes offensive strategies like spying and eavesdropping or using technology to jam the signals of the enemy.
But not every effective tactic is sophisticated. Sometimes, all that is necessary is to inject confusion by simply flooding the zone with noise. This includes all the following tactics:
- Literally drowning out messages with meaningless sounds or signals
- Confusing the recipient by overwhelming them with fake but authentic-sounded messages
- Creating “noise” in the communications environment in order to significantly slow the process of receiving and implementing a directive
In other words, an enemy force doesn’t even have to block the message in order to render it useless. The enemy merely needs to create enough noise in the environment to distract the recipient for a while. In buying time with distraction, the enemy is able to carry out an attack and be gone before the message is acted upon.
Does this hit close to home for you? It does for me.
I know God’s Word. I love God’s Word. I aim to know it more and love it more every day until the day God calls me home.
But my friend, I am so easily distracted. There is so much noise in the communication environment, and I am so easily convinced it is crucial noise worthy of my rapt attention. Further, I am quick to determine the noise demands my immediate response.
It feels right. It feels honorable. But after I’ve given the noise my attention and my response, I so often realize I’ve done so at the cost of a delay in receiving, considering, and responding to the truly critical message my God was sending through His Word.
The enemy hadn’t blocked the message. He had simply filled the air with important-sounding noise and distracted me for a moment or two while he worked in the background. The distraction wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but it was so very effective. Potent even.
Friend, there is no getting around this. You live in a very noisy world. It is also a world at war. And while your enemy has a full bag of tricks to play on you, this one is just so readily available to him. It is wrapped in your natural longing for convenience and information, and even in your very noble desire to respond to the needs of the world around you.
All that is required for you to be distracted by the noise for a moment is for it to be placed into your earshot or eyesight just long enough. Just long enough to delay—not even derail, just delay—your receipt of what God is saying to you.
But take heart, you can fight back! It will not always be convenient. It will take discipline and intentionality, but you can tune out the noise in order to hear the one message from on high. How?
“Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live . . . Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Is. 55:3, 6).
My friend, it is up to you to tune out the noise. Its volume is only increasing, and that is by design of the enemy. If you are to be prepared to stand against the tactics of the enemy while you live on Earth, you must come close to your Lord, incline your ear only to Him, and seek Him while He may be found.
Don’t get delayed. Don’t be distracted. Those are tactics of the one who aims to destroy your soul.
Incline your ear to the one voice that speaks life. Listen attentively, as though your very life depends on it. It does.