My first night as a rookie-cop-in-training, I was lost in many ways. It was all so new and unfamiliar. I was thrust into another world. With so much coming at me I felt like a thirsty man trying to take a drink from a fire hose running at full blast.

That first night on patrol, my training officer Glenn asked me, “Where are we?” I said, “What?” He spoke again in a hurried tone, “Quick, I’ve just been shot and you need to call for help. What is our location? Dispatch needs to know!” I had no idea. I felt foolish.  Immediately, I began trying to remember what street we were on while listening to the radio and trying to take in all the newness of the job. I was still lost. My mind had not yet been conditioned to multi-task as a cop.

A few hours later, Glenn asked me again, “Where are we?” Again, I had no clue. He pulled our patrol car to the curb and we had one of the many “talks” a training officer will have with a rookie. After a few days, I had trained my mind to be constantly in touch with my location. Eventually, Glenn stopped asking me questions about our location. He could see that my head was now on a constant swivel trying to catch a street sign or mile marker as we zoomed through the dark night. After those first few days, I always knew my exact location. To this day, my head is still on that same swivel.

A lot of print and preaching comes our way about knowing where we are going. While that is important, it is secondary to knowing where we are in this moment because all we have is this moment. 

My wife, Jan, will occasionally ask me, “How are you doing?” To be honest, sometimes I don’t always want to talk when I feel stressed or defeated, but over the years I have found I need to be brutally honest and tell her exactly what I am feeling. When I reveal to her the true location of my emotions, sometimes hidden under my masking mechanisms or a dismissive attitude, she can bring to our conversation the support and honesty I need to help me gain a new perspective and move forward.

If we don’t know the location of our emotions and true spiritual condition, we cannot get help to our current situation when a real and spiritually life-threatening need arises. Businesses can fail, dreams can die and our personal lives can slip into a season of decay because we missed the street signs of our actual condition and were not able to get help moving our way when our life takes a negative turn. 

Put your spiritual head on swivel mode as you move through life. Check the streets signs that brought you to this place. If an attack does come and you are wounded your spiritual backup units will know where to find you because you were able to tell them your true location.