In Greek mythology, the warrior Achilles dies from a poison arrow that pierces his heel. His mother had sought to protect him from such a predicted outcome by dipping him in the river Styx. But she lowered him into the river, holding him by the ankle, prohibiting the medicinal water from washing over his heel, leaving him unprotected in that one spot.
Wow. For a preacher, this exposes a boatload of material. “you shall bruise his heel.” Baptism by (almost) immersion. Goliath’s exposed forehead.
But I was reading Titus this morning, and was struck with my own problem: not an achilles heel, but an achilles heart. Whatever our strengths, our hearts are terribly vulnerable to the darts of the devil. “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” (Titus 3:2–3 NAS95) The next verses show us how God has changed our situation, but we find that it is easy to revert back to sinful patterns.
Let’s ask God to protect our Achilles hearts. Pray that He would protect us from the poison darts that would lay us low.
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