The Post You Didn't Know You Had

Here is something true about you that you have probably never once thought about. You are on watch. Right now. God posted you as a watchman over your own life and the people He put in it, and the post has been yours the whole time, whether you ever reported for duty or not.

You did not apply for it. You were assigned it the day you became a man in this family, this marriage, this house. And most men are standing it about as well as a guard asleep in the tower with the gate wide open behind him.

I know how that lands, so let me be plain. This is not a suggestion. It is not a nice idea for men who are into that kind of thing. Jesus said it, and He said it to everyone.

What I say to you I say to all, "Be on the alert!"

Mark 13:37

To all. Not to pastors. Not to the intense guys. To all. When Jesus talks about staying awake and on watch, He does not carve out an exemption for the tired man, the busy man, the man who figures somebody else has it handled. He says it to every man who will hear it, and that means you. You are a watchman. The only question is whether you are an awake one.

And here is what should get your attention. A watchman is not judged by how he does on the easy nights. Anyone can stand a post when nothing is coming. He is judged by whether he is awake when the threat is. The wall does not get breached at noon with everyone watching. It gets breached at 3am, in the quiet, when the man who was supposed to be watching had his head down.

Look at your own life and tell me the truth. Who is watching your marriage? Who is standing between your kids and what is coming for them? Who is guarding your own soul from the thing that has been eating you for years? If the honest answer to any of those is "nobody, really," then the post is empty, and it is your post, and you have been asleep in it.

This whole course is about one thing: waking you up and teaching you to stand the watch God already assigned you. We are going to walk the five things a man guards, one at a time, and we are not going to be gentle about it, because a watchman who needs to be coddled is a watchman his people cannot count on.

But before I say one more hard word, there is something you have to hear, and it changes everything about how the rest of this lands. So that is the next lesson, and you do not get to skip it. Because if you try to stand this watch without it, it will crush you. Take the post. First, learn who posted you.