Writers 
A boy sighed with satisfaction as the last of the four towers stood firm and tall. Now all he had to do to finish the sand castle was to draw the design on the top of the walls. As he worked, he watched the approaching waves. Before long they would be up to the castle. The surf had been far down on the sand when he started building four hours before, but he had known that the time would come when the waves would approach where he worked. Hence, he had built a large moat with an opening toward the sea to help the water stay in the moat instead of coming up over the entire castle.
He hoped the moat would protect his castle for a few minutes before the waves completely destroyed it.
As he finished the last of the walls, the boy also kept an eye on his younger sister. Twice she had come to “help him. The first time she had smashed an entire section of the wall with her shovel before he could stop her. The last time he had been on guard and had seen her coming. Thus, he had protected the castle from major destruction by catching her hand. Now he was especially guarding against her attack because he knew that the time he had been looking forward to, the whole time he had built the castle would soon be here. Water would soon fill the moat. Because he planned to play with his boats in the moat of the castle, the boy hoped the moat was wide and deep enough to prevent the first waves from destroying his morning’s work.
The Two Stages of Defense
The boy building the sand castle was wise. He recognized the approaching waves and the misguided help of his sister as enemies of his goal to build a castle and to play with his boats in its moat, and he defended against them.
The defense of something occurs in two stages. The boy’s first step was to guard his castle by building a wide, deep moat that would keep the first waves from sweeping over it and by keeping a watchful eye on both the waves and his sister so he would see them coming and, thus, have the opportunity to defend against their attack.
Guarding is preventive in nature. It occurs while the possibility of an attack is present but before the threat is active and near.
Recognizing the existence of an enemy who wants to steal or destroy the treasure, the one who guards watches over the treasure to safeguard it from injury or loss. He does so by taking precautions against an attack and by keeping watch so the enemy cannot slip up on him and catch him unaware. Guarding leads into the second step of defense, which is the action necessary when an enemy steps over the established boundary and threatens the treasure.
Maximizing Your Potential Guarding occurs while the possibility of an attack is present but before the threat is active and near.
This second step of defense is protecting. Protection is active defense in the midst of an assault. It implements the preestablished plan to preserve the treasure from danger or harm. The boy protected his castle when he caught his sister’s hand to keep her from ruining it.
Protecting is active defense in the midst of an assault.
We Are Responsible for Defending Our Treasure, Protecting and guarding work together. One without the other presents a weakened resistance to the thief who is trying to steal the treasure. The responsibility for this resistance lies with the recipient of the treasure. God didn’t tell Heaven or the angels to protect the garden. He told Adam to protect it. In a similar manner, the apostle Paul admonished Timothy, not his mother or his grandmother, to defend the treasure he had received:
Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith (1Timothy 1:18-19).
This defense begins with an understanding of the treasure we have received from God and is worked out in our fight to keep what we have received. This treasure is both God’s wisdom and power within us (our potential) and the gift of His Spirit.
