3 Aug, 2010
The Necessity of Training
Foxes trained to combat rat plague
(Reuters) - Authorities in China's far west have bred and trained "an army" of silver foxes bought from a fur farm to fight a plague of rats threatening a huge expanse of grasslands, state media said on Wednesday. The Xinjiang government bought 20 foxes in 2004 and they have since increased to 284 and been released into the wild, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"Foxes are excellent natural predators of the rodent. One fox can catch about 20 rats per day. There has been a decline in the rat population in several counties where the measure has been adopted," it quoted official Ni Yifei as saying. Rat numbers have exploded due to unusually dry conditions and threaten more than 5.5 million hectares of grasslands, the report said.
In one of the areas where the foxes have been released, rat numbers have dropped 70 percent, it added. "The silver fox was chosen to be the rat fighter for its distinctive ability to run, hunt and live under the harsh living conditions on the prairie," Ni said.
1 Timothy 4:7-8 (NLT)
Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly. Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.
What does God’s Story scripture teach us about training?
Paul communicates here that training is part of living life with God. As we see in today’s story, training is necessary in order to combat plague-like adversaries. The plagues that Paul mentions are “godless ideas and old wives’ tales.” These teachings were causing people in Timothy’s church to have a wrong understanding of who God is and what he is all about.
The emphasis in these wrong teachings was that followers of God should reject everything in life considered to be pleasurable. Instead of trying to be godly through physical denial of certain activities, Paul encourages us to be godly by looking beyond the physical to the spiritual, which happens as we learn to honor God in every area of our life. As this occurs, we will experience benefits in our life now and in our life after death.
How can we connect God’s Story scripture to our lives?
The first thing for us to remember is that God never promises that our lives as Christians are going to be easy. Just like Jesus suffered much during his time on earth, we now take part in his sufferings as his representatives. Because of this, we should commit ourselves to godly training, learning to expect attacks of all kinds and learning to combat them with the truth of who God is and what he has done for us in Christ.
The second thing for us to remember is that training to be godly does not happen by just physically refraining from certain activities. Though there are sinful activities that we certainly should refrain from, we should learn to develop a perspective of life and people that is based on God’s perspective. As we allow our worldview to be based on God as he is revealed to us in his story, we will be actively engaged in training ourselves in godliness.
How can we connect today’s story, God’s Story scripture, and our story to others?
Both today’s story and God’s Story scripture show that training is needed to combat plagues. Just like the foxes are being trained to combat the rat plague, we as followers of Jesus should be training to combat plagues. The plagues we must combat show up in views, opinions, philosophies, and perspectives that are not rooted in God’s truth.
If we have friends that have not become followers of Jesus, then they are very likely being negatively affected by certain ungodly viewpoints. Part of our job is to clearly communicate how God’s perspective reflects absolute truth because it is based in his absolute love. This love has been clearly expressed through Jesus’ death and resurrection by which we are offered the forgiveness of sins and a new life based in a restored relationship to God.
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