One minute he was there, and the next minute he was gone! Poof — just disappeared.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a magic show — it was a combat patrol in Vietnam in enemy territory. I was the last guy in the column. We were sending out a four-man observation team and I asked permission to go along. Standing outpost duty was not part of my assigned duties as a Forward Observer, but the Company Commander approved my request.

At this point, I was beginning to question the wisdom of that decision.

There are protocols for situations like this. I knew what they were — I was hoping the other patrol members knew as well. When you are walking on patrol and lose sight of the man in front of you, you stop and hunker down and wait for him to come back to you. When you are on patrol, your head is on a swivel, constantly looking in every direction for some telltale sign of the enemy, including behind you. The more time that passes being separated, the hairier it gets.

The Marine in the rear stops and waits for the Marine in front to come back. The Marine who realizes the person behind him is no longer there stops the patrol and waits several minutes for the individual to catch up. Barring that, they backtrack to locate the individual or individuals left behind.

While it seemed like a lifetime, it was probably only three to four minutes before the Marine materialized on the trail in front of me. With that, we all moved forward to our designated position.

As Christians, we can become separated from following King Jesus. Jesus’s call to His disciples, and by implication to us, was to “follow me” (Matthew 4:19). Scripture exhorts us to “look to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). We do this in our intimate time with the Lord because we “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18, ESV).

Cultivating an intimate personal relationship with Jesus requires us to separate ourselves from the world and all of its distractions and seek a quiet place of refuge. The Spirit speaks to us in a whisper (1 Kings 19:12) and we need to create the proper environment for that to happen.

Nineteenth-century preacher and author Charles Haddon Spurgeon addressed the potential causes of being separated from King Jesus:

Tell me where you have lost the company of Christ, and I will tell you the most likely place to find Him. Have you lost Christ in the closet by restraining prayer? Then it is there you must seek and find Him. Did you lose Christ by sin? You will find Christ in no other way but by the giving up of the sin and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify the member in which the lust dwells. Did you lose Christ by neglecting the Scriptures? You must find Christ in the Scriptures. It is a true proverb, “Look for a thing where you dropped it — it is there.” So, look for Christ where you lost Him, for He has not gone away.

Let me ask you — have you lost sight of King Jesus? Is He no longer the figure ahead of you whom you once followed? Take heart, my friend! He knows that you have become separated, and He is simply waiting for you to come to that realization. Call to Him and He will be there on the trail, ready to resume the journey with you.

What say ye, Man of Valor?
Semper Fidelis!