Daily Devotional

Our world is getting uglier every day and along with that, anyone who points out the ugliness of it, is ridiculed, threatened, and shamed. For most of our country’s history, being a Christian in it has been relatively easy. We have been a “christian” nation and therefore being one didn’t seem out of place, weird, or foreign. However as the darkness descends further on this nation, true christianity is going to seem stranger and more foreign to masses. We already see many large and popular churches bending the knee to the shifting culture, choosing to conform rather than to stand with boldness. But that is not our call.

We have never been guaranteed that if we accepted Christ our lives would be easy, healthy, or prosperous; in fact just the opposite. We are told to be light in this dark world. But what does light do? It dispels the darkness, and the darkness does not want to be dispelled, there will be resistance. If we are not seeing any resistance it might be time to ask ourselves if we in fact look too much like the world to be recognized as the light. God has not promised us an easy time, but He did promise us that He would be with us, that He would uphold us with His righteous right hand.
 
So when you are faced with trials, pain, suffering, resistance, do not despair, but rejoice in your sufferings. God is using these things to not only refine you and sanctify you to be more like Christ, but He is often using those situations to show the world how you respond to them. Remember we are being watched, even when we don’t think we are by a world that can’t wait to call us hypocrites. Our response to difficult times preaches to the world just as much as a sermon on Sunday. That is our daily ministry to live the gospel, to be God’s love with skin on, to keep the faith in the face of our sufferings, and to boldly stand for the truth, especially in the face of worldly pressures.

God may take you through the fire, but rejoice in it, for He is with us and will not forsake us. “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and even. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.