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Avoiding Devilish Glitches and Maintaining Godly Control

 

When I was a young boy, I built and flew radio-control model airplanes with my father.  You would stand of the ground with a little box in your hands that had an antenna out of the top (for transmitting radio waves) and two metal sticks on the one side.   You moved the sticks to fly the airplane.  It was amazing how much control you could have with this kind of a system.
 

Every now and then we would experience what is known in radio-control speak as a “glitch.”  Being radio-controlled, each plane operated on a certain frequency - a certain kind of radio wave.  Anyone operating a radio device nearby with too much power could cause your system to go haywire.  Such lapses in control were known as glitches.  When encountering a glitch, some planes would just keep flying straight, no matter what the person did to try and turn it.  Sometimes, planes would just keep going, getting smaller and smaller, while the helpless operator could only watch as a significant amount of time, energy and money flew off into the sunset.  Sometimes, planes would gyrate wildly and crash - often into the ground, but also into things like electric wires and parked cars.  Every now and then, a glitch would bring an aircraft screaming towards the group of people gathered at the flying field.  That’s when the cry of “GLITCH!  GLITCH!  GET DOWN!” would be heard.  When you heard that cry, you got down - fast!  If you didn’t, you could get hurt and be in much pain.

 

There are ways to avoid glitches with radio-control aircraft.  The power of the glitch is in the strength of the signal coming from the other radio source.  The reason you lose control of your aircraft is because the signal of the glitch seeking to destroy your aircraft is stronger than the signal coming from your transmitter.  If the signal from your transmitter is stronger than destructive, interfering signals, you retain control.  Each transmitter has a battery - a rechargeable battery.  If your battery gets low, you are more susceptible to loss of control.  So, to avoid glitches: KEEP YOUR BATTERY FULLY CHARGED!

 

“Submit yourselves...to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7).”  In that one verse is found most of what we need to know about control – not of model airplanes, but of ourselves.

 

Think about the devil as the glitch in your life and in my life.  This view is born out in Scripture when you look at the word for devil in the original language of the New Testament.  The word in Greek is “diabolos,” and the root of that word means “to separate.”  In flying radio control aircraft, a glitch from another source seeks to separate your aircraft from the signal of your transmitter.  The devil is that which seeks to separate us from the guidance and direction of God.  When people are separated from the guidance and direction of God, their lives become very much like a radio control aircraft experiencing a glitch.  Some of them just keep going more and more away from God, as their friends and family watch helplessly.  Some of them gyrate wildly and crash and burn.  Some of them crash into things and cause much destruction.  Some of them crash into other people and cause much hurt and pain.

 

Are we then only passive victims of this devilish glitch?  Absolutely not!  James 4:7 says: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”  Just like with radio control aircraft, there are steps we can take to avoid glitches.  The important thing is to make sure that we’re more tuned to the guidance and direction of God than to anything else that would seek to send us spiraling down.  When the signal from the devil is being received by us stronger than the signal from God is, we are in big trouble.  All of this is to say that the advice for avoiding destructive loss of control in our lives is the same as avoiding such loss with radio control model aircraft: Keep your battery charged!  How do you keep your spiritual battery charged so that you can receive the signal of God full strength?  You do it by regularly utilizing the means of spiritual battery charging God has given you (otherwise known as “means of grace”): prayer, Bible study, worship (including communion), fellowship with others who are seeking to follow God and accountability to them.  This is part of what I believe James 4:7 means when it says, “Resist the devil...”  If such things are becoming less and less frequent in our lives, then it may be that God’s signal to us is getting weaker and weaker and that we’re becoming more and more susceptible to signals from other sources.

 

Remember: KEEP YOUR SPIRITUAL BATTERY CHARGED!

 

Blessings,

Pastor Blaik

 

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