I’ve spent a lot of time on the range this year dialing in optics on various firearms. It’s not that difficult, but it’s time consuming and annoying. When you finally get some coveted range time, the last thing you want to do is stand around adjusting sights.
Take a few shots, adjust the windage. Take a few more, adjust the elevation. Your spotter tells you your shots are hitting a few inches to the left; more tweaking, more shots. Eventually you finally find zero: where your dot is sighted onto the exact point where you want your shots to hit, every time. After that, you’re able to focus on other things like stance, movement, and speed, because you know you’re dialed in – you can get accurate data about the areas you need to work on, because your zero isn’t a problem.
We’re willing to spend time zeroing our firearms because we know that might mean the difference between life and death. Without it, we’ll be continuously missing the mark. But here’s a hard question and it’s mainly for the guys: Are we dialed in to Jesus?
Think about that for a second and reflect on it. How much time are we dedicating to dialing in with Him? How about dialing in with our wives and our kids? Is our zero spot-on with them?
I mention this because it’s easy to lose our spiritual sight alignment while pursuing good causes. We need to provide for our families, so we work overtime, make financial investments, and take on the extra jobs.
We need to protect them physically so we spend all that time training and teaching them self-defense.
We need to discipline our kids and address faulty identity issues, so after a long day, when all we want to do is rest, we suck it up and initiate those hard conversations that teach lessons but often leave nobody happy, and maybe even a little resentful.
With our wives, we tend to think that so long as we’re not looking at porn and we remember to compliment them from time to time we’re doing alright. But is alright what we aspire to? Are we satisfied with just qualifying as husbands, or do we want to improve to where we nail it every time? We need our marriages to be dialed in as accurately as our EDC pistol. Are they?
When we focus on the wrong things, our sight alignment gets out of whack. Our abiding in Christ is the calibration that allows us to dial in everything else. So I ask again: How’s your Jesus focus? Is that dialed in?
Before you start justifying and dodging the question, just know that I’m right there with you. Getting out my bible to read a few chapters is a daily struggle, and I don’t get to it every day. I need to, but life gets in the way and even though I could easily turn on my audio Bible app when driving, I turn on a podcast instead. Why? Spiritual opposition, that’s why. So let’s cut the crap and stop making excuses for candy-a** efforts. Sorry to the ladies reading this, but again, I’m mainly focusing on guys here and we men have a particular inflection that gets us moving.
I know it’s a battle. When I’m standing for worship, my mind can wander. During sermons I can easily get distracted and zone out, or focus on keeping my kids quiet, and miss the bible study entirely. And that’s when I’m free to engage in the service or study time, but often I’m not.
With my position on our church’s security team, most weeks I miss worship entirely and only partially hear the sermon. If I’m lucky I might sit with my family twice a month, and even then my eyes are consistently darting around the sanctuary, maintaining situational awareness. Some of us just have that sheepdog mentality because we know the threats are real, and that someone needs to watch out for it. We’re the ones who like to sit near the exits with our backs to wall because stuff happens all the time.
That’s a sacrifice many men make to protect the flocks – our own, our church’s, our communities. First responders, cops, military, corrections officers, electrical linemen, plow operators, etc…don’t always get to church regularly; the world needs them manning the walls. There are a lot of guys out there with plenty of important things distracting them from zeroing in to that Jesus alignment. For those in that particular boat, it’s imperative that we dial in. It starts on our knees.
Finding Your Zero
1. First pray, then pray some more: It seems almost too easy, but how often do you do it? How often do you ask Jesus to reveal to you the things you need to adjust? Go ahead and do it now. Odds are He will tell you something right off the bat. Likely, it will also be something we already know, because He’s been trying to get it through our thick skulls for a long time.
2. Repent: Whatever He just told you to do, do it. Maybe we need to confess something. Maybe we need to apologize. No shame, no fear. Just man up and get on with it, today, before you **ss out again. If you need help getting up the courage to do so, call up that brother of yours and ask him to hold you accountable till it’s done. If you don’t have a brother in Christ to confide in, email me and I’ll have your back.
3. Get right with your wife: If there’s a sin issue that you need to confess, consider what I mentioned above. If not, then just find her and ask her, “Are you and I good? Anything we need to talk about?” She might brush things off but hopefully she’ll recognize the sincerity of your intention and you can jointly deal with whatever’s been simmering. If things are solid, great; consider the asking as merely routine maintenance. We’re usually good at that when it comes to cars and guns and business machines, but not always with relationships.
4. Get in the Word (aka, read your Bible): Notice I listed it after Get right with your wife. There’s a reason for that:
Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. 1 Peter 3:7
If you’re not right with her, it will hinder everything else. There are countless examples of Christian men, even dynamic preachers, effectively teaching the Word of God while privately being schmucks to their wives. So if you’re going to spend four hours in your prayer closet or studying the Word, make sure your wife doesn’t need help with the dishes first. Any endeavor, no matter how important, can become a vehicle by which the enemy can gain a foothold to use against us. The enemy seeks to destroy our marriages, your families, and our witness. Learning his tactics and applying the Scriptures is the only way to combat those traps.
Here’s a question that reveals if we’re reading our Bibles enough: What are you reading, and what are you learning from it? [Note: This is also a great question to ask any guy seeking to court your daughter.]
If we don’t have an immediate answer for both parts of that question, we’re either not reading frequently enough or we’re not reflecting on what we’ve read. Bible reading isn’t about checking off boxes any more than range time is about putting holes in paper. If you’re not making each round count, you’re squandering opportunity.
Which leads us to the other thing we need to do.
Stop Sinning
That might sound easier said than done, but not once you realize what sinning means. The word “sin” is translated from the Hebrew root, hātā, and generally refers to the idea of erring, doing wrong, missing the mark, or going astray. Sin is an archery term, or to bring it up to modern parlance, a shooting term. When you sin, you’re hitting off target. Maybe this will help. Note: in precision shooting, the black dots are where your shots need to land:
We would never tolerate this when it comes to our shooting, so why do we tolerate it when it comes to our prayer life being outside of zero, or our Bible reading, or our relationships with our spouses and children? Why do we make exceptions for scattershot worship, or prayers that fly past the target because we casually fired them without bothering to get into our fighting stance?
If we want to produce tight groupings in the proper circle, we need to dedicate the time necessary to achieve it. Bible reading takes discipline, prayer takes focus, abiding with Jesus takes time, proper sight alignment, and teachability. If we miss the mark, we need to let Him teach us the whys and hows so we can dial in our efforts for the next go around.
Every six months my team practices in a shooting simulator, with real world scenarios designed to hone our techniques and thought processes. Every time, most of us get virtually killed in at least one of the sims. Even the best shooters. But every time we learn from our mistakes, every time we learn new things we need to work on. The time is worth the investment because you may not get a second chance in this world. You have to be fully equipped to meet the coming storms.
Guys like us are ready to take action should a bad guy walk into the sanctuary, or the movie theater, or the grocery store. We train for it, war-game it; we always have a plan. How many of us can say the same regarding the terrors that strike at midday, or the thief who steals in the night that only Jesus can prevent? How many of us are quick to pray for healing and restoration when the world says the matter is hopeless? Are we finally ready to get dialed in with our spouse about that thing? Most of all, how is our Jesus focus, and how much time remains for us to do something about it?
As with shooting, the more you do these things, the less often you miss. Just like stud marksmen who shoot a lot, people who abide and pray and read the Word habitually rarely ever sin. Proximity to Jesus doesn’t allow for it because He won’t go there with you or let you stay there. The enemy would have you believe you’re a sinner, a lousy shot. Bull. The Lord says you’re a saint, and you’re fully equipped to hit the target every time you step onto the line. Your success in both areas is proportional to the degree of emphasis you place on the fundamentals: abiding, worship, prayer…stance, grip, sights. It’s up to us. We can dial in now and get our sights aligned, or we can blow it off and hope for the best when the wolves come prowling.
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