Ms. Hazel. Part II. {Sabotage}

Last week I told you about Ms. Hazel. The spy woman. Who lived down the road. And we had no idea. I guess that means she was a pretty good spy.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be spy? I have. On numerous occasions. Like last week. And three days ago. And last night.

Anyway.
When my family was home last week we revisited one of our favorite movies from our childhood:
Home Alone 2. Lost in New York.
What a classic.
“Hello, this is Peter Macalaster, the father…” (If any of you have seen it, you know what I am talking about!).

The story goes that Kevin is a boy of ten years old who gets split up from his parents at the airport. He goes to New York, they go to Miami. While there he runs about, enjoying himself at the expense of his father’s credit card and doing all the things a ten year old boy left alone in NYC would want to do.

What he doesn’t want to do, however, is run into the bad guys that he had to fight off in Home Alone 1.
But, like all good movies of the early 90’s go, sure enough, Harry and Marv spot him in New York and are out to get their revenge on the little boy who hilariously sabotaged them the previous year. All that follows is little Kevin, again, successfully outwitting the bad guys and thwarting all of their plans for the harm they wanted to inflict on the little buddy, in a clean, comedic fashion you don’t see much of these days.

So what in the world, you might ask yourself, does this have to do with Ms. Hazel?

And my answer?
Nothing! They are just both stories from my childhood that I wanted to tell you about.
Ha.
That’s not actually true.
Sure, I never watched Home Alone 2 with Ms. Hazel, but what with all of this talk about spies and people sabotaging bad guys it has got me thinking.

When was the last time you thought about sabotage?

Are you like the majority of my friends who would answer “Never” to that question, or are you like the handful of friends who would admit that at times they have been completely preoccupied with thoughts about it?
I will let you guess which category I fall into.

Well, the other day I WAS thinking about sabotage and spy-ness (thanks to thoughts about Ms. Hazel and Home Alone 2) and I got to thinking, “Why don’t I practice a little more sabotage in my life?”

Now before you get all huffy let me explain.
I don’t mean sabotage in the sense of tricking out buildings, setting booby traps, starting rumors, etc. I am talking about spiritual sabotage.

When I was in college I picked up a book for pleasure reading about this group of English spies during WWII. They were totally off-record, nobody knows what happened to them, all they know is that during the war their sole goal was sabotage of the Germans.

They would change rail road tracks so that trains loaded with supplies going to Berlin ended up in Rome, they would throw guns into rivers, the girls would figure out how to date German military generals so that they would hear all kinds of secret plans, etc etc. Those types of things. Anything they could do to thwart plans, change the course of a project, or be a force of resistance not originally anticipated by the enemy, they would. Small things. Big things. Whatever would be a fly in the ointment—a sabotage, if you will.
This book got the thoughts forming in my head and I have been mulling them these how many years.

Why is it that when people becomes Christians a lot of times they tend to lose their backbone? I understand the whole, “Live at peace with all people when it is in your power to do so,” but what about the verse where Jesus says, “Be shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves?”

How in the world are we to be shrewd, and yet retain a level of purity, not muddy our souls up?

Let me propose that the answer is spiritual sabotage.

How many of you know someone who isn’t a Believer in Jesus?
(All of you better have raised your hand.)
Ok, do you believe that if that person gave their life to the Lord that God would have a plan for their life, a purpose of some kind?
(I hope all of you raised your hand again.)
Well, have you thought about the fact that the devil has a plan for that person, too? Just like how the Nazi’s those English spies were sabotaging had plans. They had plans for the continent of Europe, Asia, the world.

As Believers in Jesus, the ones no longer under the plans of the devil, why don’t we be like the English and practice a little more sabotage on the devil?

Why are we not making more of a stink about all of the spiritual territory (i.e. the souls of people) that he is claiming? Why are we taking the decreasing of the church just lying down?
What about all of that shrewdness we are called to? We have been given the Spirit of the Living God to indwell us. That’s power, kids. The devil’s schemes are not too much for us now.
You know, the devil has plans for people, but the devil doesn’t know the future. So why don’t we try to catch him off guard?

All of those non-Christians we know, the ones whose eyes are still veiled, I wonder when was the last time we strategically prayed for them, sent a flaming arrow in their direction to burn off that veil. Sometimes I wonder what could happen if I took this stuff more seriously. The devil wasn’t planning on my prayer being directed towards that person, I guarantee it, and all of the sudden there is resistance against him, against his plans. It’s we Believers making efforts to derail the train, does that make sense? If that person was a train, trust me, the enemy wants them in “Berlin.” What in the world can we do to get them to “Rome”?

I have talked before about the hardcore music scene. I have a couple ties to that industry, so this isn’t totally coming out of left field, but I was at a concert earlier this summer and I was watching a band that is straight up evil. I know, nobody ever wants to call someone evil, but if you put together their lyrics with their lifestyle with their beliefs about stuff, all you can see is the bony fingers of Satan, strangling the life out of them.

And as I was watching them I thought, “What could maybe happen if I started praying for them?” Surely the devil would have NEVER expected that wrench to be thrown into his plans, and I can’t help but think that it HAS to make waves. It has to throw one of his guns into the river.

Will something happen in their lives to show proof that my prayers weren’t in vain? Who knows. Better question: WHO CARES? Saving people is not my business. Getting in the devil’s way is my business. I don’t know whether my prayers will lead to them answering the call of Jesus, but I do know this: if I ever was “in line” with them at the judgment seat of Christ, I will be able to look them in the eye and say, “I’m sorry you never let the truth of the gospel soften your heart, but I fought my hardest for you. You were not lost without a battle.”

Now I am a realist and I know that at that point, aka after they have died, they will probably not have cared that I prayed for them, but somehow I think God will.
Because what if the opposite was true? What if at the Judgment Seat I was in line with those guys, guys who I had ties to and KNEW were in the hand of Satan, but I had never done anything to sabotage the plans the devil had for them? What if Jesus looks at me on that day and says, “Their end would have been different if you had prayed for them.”

I have no desire to get into a spiritual discussion right now on predestination and free will and whether any of the above concept is possible or right and all that jazz, and I know I don’t have anything theological to back up what I am saying, but all I want you to do is think about the people in your life who don’t yet know Jesus. Or even the people you only have ties to, or complete strangers, or whoever in the world God puts on your heart or in your eyesight…think about those people and ask yourself, “Am I doing anything to thwart the devil’s plans for their life?”

Be honest with yourself:
Are there prayers that you need to pray for those people?
Are there conversations you need to have with those people?
Things said and prayers prayed that the devil never saw coming?

Are we going to thwart his plans, sabotage, if you will, his plans, or are we going to just live in a false peace with them that comes only from our lack of interference with the course of their eternity?

“Snatch them out of the fire…” Jude says (verse 23).
Listen, Wolfies. There are a lot of people on a Satan-driven train going to “Berlin” right now. Don’t take this knowledge with a hands-off approach.
Do something to try to derail it.