July 22

"The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies;". Nineveh was a great city which had repented 125 years earlier under Jonah's ministry, but something happened to the repentant, they died off and left no legacy. In Iron Man 2, Iron man's mission was to leave a legacy of peace, but the villain of the movie, the Russian, did not want to just kill him, but wanted to destroy Iron Man's legacy.

I (we) have a villain in our life who wants to destroy the legacy of what God has done in history AND in our lives. He wants us to forget about God and get on with our lives of self gratification and self absorption. This leads to the quote above from Nahum. When we forget about God and do our own thing, our gates are wide open to our enemies. I am sadden when I hear Christians talk about how they are under attack and it is clearly because they have left their gates wide open. (i.e. If you are under the stranglehold of debt, it is because you spent too much not because the enemy did anything. The enemy NOW has you because you opened the gate). We have to tend our gates and how we do that is by only opening them in the first place to the God of Abraham. This isn't rocket science for me, but it is a daily battle to stay focused and obedient to God. As the head of the family, when I open my gates, my whole family is vulnerable.

God show me where my gates are open so I may close them. Show me my proclivities to continue to open them so I can watch carefully for those enemies.