This morning, I awoke to a strange, yet familiar feeling. Forty-three years ago as a young rookie cop in training, I experienced my first car stop. I was riding with a training officer and relied on his wisdom to survive. Car stops present a vulnerable situation where your training will become one of your primary survival tools. Also present is an intuitive sense of danger that is developed in a real-life conflict. This is an intuition known only to cops and combat veterans. All of these elements must work together in order to survive the mean streets.
When you pull over a car you never know who is inside. It may be a little old lady who forgot to activate her turn signal or someone with a plan to take out a cop in a well-designed ambush. On the approach to the car all your sensory perceptions, intuition and training should be running at the highest level possible. Failing to approach a vehicle without this level of awareness could be a fatal mistake.
We are making an approach to a challenging season in our history. Discernment, training, and wisdom will be needed to accurately determine how to approach people and how to take an appropriate course of action. You will also need the intuition of the Spirit that only comes because you have trained yourself to be aware of the spiritual realities of the world in which we live. This is not a business-as-usual season. How you approach this moment in history will determine the survival of your credibility as a believer and the ability of the Church to impact the surrounding culture with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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