‘Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. ‘ Romans 12:1-2
Can you feel it?
With every passing day, it feels like our world is crumbling around us. When you look at the news, you see division over everything. But for the Christian, none of this should be a surprise.
What bothers me is that when I look at Christian groups, I see a call to arms or Christian manhood. This call is almost at a fevered pitch. But when I look at it, I try to figure out who we are supposed to stand opposed to.
When I see these posts, the one thing I miss is who the enemy is. It is not clear to me who we are supposed to be standing against.
Who is the enemy?
Paul gave us the definition of our enemy in Ephesians:
‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ Ephesians 6:12
We seem to get confused about this. But “our struggle is not against flesh and blood.” When I look at this verse, and the Lord put this verse in my heart several years back, I realize that the enemy is not the people we see daily. It is not even the people we see on TV every day.
But the world would not like us to conform to this. It wants us to be at odds with each other, and this seems to be ramped up pretty well, even within Christian circles.
We constantly have people picking apart the preaching of others. Some people are profiting from this activity. It makes me sad to see this happening. So here’s how this works: we have people preaching a flawed gospel, let’s say the “prosperity gospel.”
Please understand that I disagree with the “prosperity gospel.” Now, we have those who take snippets of these sermons and post them on YouTube, showing this preaching and explaining why it isn’t good.
Now, this isn’t wrong in itself, but where it falls apart is that people are more attracted to division than they are to a good message. One YouTuber was asked why he doesn’t produce teaching videos instead of pointing to all of other people’s ills, and he responded that “no one watches those types of videos.”
So, instead of producing videos that would genuinely bless the hearts of those who watch them, he chose to create videos to get views and get paid.
It’s a shame.
This is what the world does. The world complains, compares, and criticizes.
As Christians, we are called not to “conform” to the way of this world.
Our “real” is our flesh and our “desires.” The battlefield is the six inches between our ears.
Why would we focus on what others are doing? It is much harder to focus on that than on dealing with sin in our lives.
It makes us feel better about ourselves when we can point to others and what they are doing that doesn’t measure up to God’s Holy standard.
The reality is that the world around us gets better when we deal heavily with the sin in our lives while helping those around us.
When we start to do this, we begin to glorify God. We become the “living sacrifice” God wants to use to bring in more of His chosen.
‘The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, skillful in teaching, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.’ 2 Timothy 2:24-26
We deal with two types of people in our walk with Christ:
– Unbelievers
– Believers
And each one requires the exact handling as Paul wrote in 2 Timothy. Here’s how this looks:
We are not “quarrelsome.” For some reason, I feel many people think they have to be “right” about everything. This produces quarrels.
We are to be “kind.” This doesn’t mean that we are not honest or that we sugarcoat the truth. Being kind is being honest with the other person.
We are to be “skillful in teaching.” Teaching requires knowing the subject matter. If we are going to teach people about God’s Word, we should be learning God’s Word every day.
We are to be “patient when wronged.” We are to fight that tendency to get even from being wronged. This is one of those things of the world we are not to be “conformed” to.
We must deal with others with “gentleness correcting those who are in opposition.” When I look at the posts I see online, one of the things I miss is “gentleness.”
We must understand that God saves, not us. God is the one who grants repentance. I believe we become too emotionally invested in seeing others come to know the Lord.
We love others and want them to know the Lord, but I think sometimes, if we are not walking in step with the Spirit, we could be doing the opposite of what we’d like to see happen.
‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ‘ Galatians 5:22-23
Living in step with the Spirit is the most impactful thing we can do for those around us and God. When we do this, the fruit in our lives will be evident to those around us.
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
I pray that You continue to work in the hearts of Your elect. Let our lives reflect Your glory.
Let us live with the fruit of Your Spirit. Help us to lay down the sin in our lives so that our lives become more and more like Jesus.
I thank You for putting people in my path so that I can witness Your ability to change the lives of those who respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
In the name of Jesus, I pray, Amen!! 🙏❤️
