Pastor's Corner

16 Nov
Screen Shot 2022 11 16 at 3.47.22 PM

Mid-Week Challenge

If you are old enough to remember high school politics you will recall that the most qualified person normally did not win the student council election.  We always voted for the most popular person.  Experience, desire and determination had nothing to do with how we made our choice.  We voted for the candidate that looked the best and told us what we wanted to hear at the time.  Not much has changed in how we cast our vote.  We are always going to be attracted to the “beliefs” of the popular kid.  Don’t believe me, just look at the last national election.  Most of us will probably never run for public office, but we are being “voted on” every day.  As Christians the world casts their opinion on God based on the way we live our life.  A lot of the time we are more likely to live in ways that discourage rather than encourage others to trust in Jesus.  

To minimize the negative and maximize the positive, we must decide at the start of the day to live Biblically.  When we say to God, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105), do we mean it?  Will our actions show it, or will we allow the peer pressures of life to take us off the path God has set before us?  Do we choose God’s way or the culture’s way?  Going against the pack will cost us.  It has been said that, “It is far easier to float with the current than to swim against it.” Living Biblically in an unbiblical culture requires courage, as the members of the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11:35–38 vividly remind us! 

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis observed: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. . . . A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”  Would Jesus have been spared if Pilate would have been more courageous instead of listening to the crowd?  In the days to come, the further our culture turns from traditional morals and ethics, the more it needs to see and hear Biblical truth. The less it considers God’s word to be relevant, the more it needs to see the relevance of it in Believer’s lives. 

What is your next step into Biblical obedience? In other words, who will you cast your vote for when it comes to living out your faith?  If you have to pause before you answer, it probably means you are in need of an extra measure of spiritual courage. No doubt, we all are.  At times I am fatigued by the simple thought of having to hear the news of the day.  Where is the attack coming from now?  The truth is, the enemy is always looking for an opening.  That is the nature of competition, but the stakes are much higher than a position in Congress.  We are fighting for our very souls; eternity is on the line.  

I hope that in the time since high school, we have learned the popular vote isn’t always what is best.  When the future of your eternal soul is on the line, which path will you take?  Where will you cast your vote?  I guess like in all major life decisions, the choices we make today will determine our destination, not the desire of our heart in the moment.       

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.  Matthew 7:13-14

Serving the Savior,

Bro. Jonathan

By: Dr. Jonathan Richerson

Comments (0)

    No one has commented on this page yet.

Leave a Comment

You cannot post comments until you have logged in. Login Here.