Recommended Citation: Lawal, J. O. (2025, March 9). Be careful and prayerful. From Pastor’s Desk, 12(45).
Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be multiplied to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am glad to welcome you to the second week of the month of March 2025. And I pray that God will keep you from falling into any trap set by the devil for your soul, so that you may stand blameless at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
As we begin this new week, I want to admonish you with these words of our Lord Jesus Christ:
“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36NIV)
What are the main things the Lord wants us to note and take seriously, as we see in this bible text? The first is the need for us to be careful. Why do we need to be careful? The reason is that our enemy, Satan, will daily use all kinds of things to fight our souls in order to enslave us and make us forget that this earth is not our permanent home. And if we are not careful, we will have been lost to the anxieties of this life and to all kinds of ungodly things that will ruin our lives and souls before we know what is happening.
So, be careful. Be careful of where you go. Be careful of who you make friends with. Be careful of what you allow your eyes to see and what you allow your ears to hear. And be careful of what thoughts you permit in your mind. Otherwise, you may just lose yourself to the world and to the devil before you know it.
The second thing the Lord wants us to pay attention to, as we see in that bible text, is our devotion to prayer. There are, of course, all kinds of prayers. But the prayers He is talking about here have to do with the preservation of our souls in these last days. So, first, He tells us to pray that we will be able to escape all the terrible things, accidents, calamities, plagues, famines and so forth, that will be happening in the last days. Second, He tells us to pray that we will be able to stand before Him when He returns.
What is the point of all this, then? It is that none of us can escape the dangers and corruption of the last days, if we are not preserved by God Himself. Our boldness, determination and strong will are not enough to preserve us. God Himself has to preserve us. Otherwise, we will just wake up one day and realise that we too have become everything we have once preached against.
Therefore, apart from being careful in our daily walk in this life, we must also give ourselves to earnestly praying that God, in His mercy, will preserve our lives and souls from all the dangers and corruption of these last days. And if we will continually do this in faith, we will not be put to shame. Instead, we will be preserved pure and blameless when our Lord Jesus returns.
Do have a lovely week.
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