December 2, 2009
“Get down face first on the ground! Put your hands behind your head! Don’t move!”
My son, still disoriented from the flashbang, quickly complied with the ERT teams commands and lay down on the floor. He was cuffed and dragged out of the house into an awaiting police cruiser.
Now, it’s not quite what you are thinking. You see, my son David – who wants to be a cop – volunteered to participate in an RCMP exercise last year. There was an old dilapidated house across from his school that the RCMP set up as a simulated meth lab take down. David was one of the “workers” in the lab. He was given instructions by one of the RCMP to lock the front door when the member left and then quickly run to take shelter. David followed him to the door, then took longer than he anticipated to lock the door, due to an awkward lock. As he was madly trying to lock the door he heard the “go” for the commencement of the exercise and looked up with horror to see the meanest, toughest RCMP ERT team charging the house with a battering ram to smash the door down. He just got the door locked and raced for cover when the door blew open and a flashbang was thrown in. The flashbang exploded with a blinding flash of light and a stunningly loud “bang” that threw David and the other “workers” into total disorientation while the RCMP swept the house and arrested the suspects.
Flashbangs are a standard stun grenade used by many police and military forces around the world. Upon detonation it emits an intensely loud “bang” (170-180 decibels) and blinding flash of more than one million candela. It is designed to be thrown into enclosed spaces to distract and temporarily incapacitate enemy personnel for easier capture.
I was praying with a friend this week and had the thought that the Holy Spirit breathes on scripture to throw spiritual flashbangs into our heart. We need to be in a continuous process of replacing the lies we have believed with the Truth of God’s Word. When we are feeding our hearts with the Truth of God’s Word it happens. Have you ever been reading scripture and something jumps out at you to capture your attention and shift your perspective? That’s a spiritual flashbang. Revelation. Illumination. That’s a spiritual Flash bang. The Word of God explodes in our heart – temporarily incapacitating enemy personnel for easy capture. We see the Truth and then need to deal swiftly with the lies of the enemy.
While you are reading scripture, don’t just read through it like a dead empty ritual. Ask the Holy Spirit to make it come alive to you, to open the eyes of your heart to see the Truth in a transformational way. Ask the Holy Spirit to throw in a spiritual flashbang so you can easily capture enemy personnel.
II Corinthians 10:5
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Strength and courage,
David