Day 2451 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.


1 Corinthians 1:18 NIV

I had something hit me last night and I thought about it until I finally fell asleep: Our faith goes against everything. The Gospel goes against everything. I know I've talked about this in the past, but the message of God's truth stands in complete contrast to everything our world teaches and believes. So it's no wonder at all that so many struggle with it and fight back against it. It’s no surprise that so many never come to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. It's just too hard.

The Gospel requires us to go places, do things, and consider possibilities that make no sense to our worldly minds. It requires us to consider the possibility that we’re not perfect. It requires us to acknowledge the fact that many of the things we’ve done were in fact wrong and that sin has been a massive part of our lives since our first breath. It requires us to put our pride on the shelf so that we can admit those wrongs and confess our sins.

It requires us to step out of the spotlight and stop putting ourselves and our desires first. It requires us to accept the fact that everything we’ve ever thought and believed and followed and prioritized before finding Christ was wrong. It demands that we realize our desperate need to repent, to change, to humble ourselves and undergo the arduous task of learning an entirely new way of living, of thinking, of behaving. It gives us a completely new perspective that changes everything!

It needs us to understand that chasing worldly things and living from a worldly perspective only leads us away from the peace, the joy, the fulfillment, and every other good thing that we’re hoping to find. It requires us to go against the grain of our worldly society and disregard the things that everyone else has deemed important or valuable. It means leaving things behind that we may have spent years trying to achieve or attain.

It asks us to walk away from the way of life that we’ve always known and step into something that we can’t possibly understand or even begin to wrap our minds around. It hands us a new map to a new destination that follows a path we would never choose to take toward a goal we can’t see and this concept of eternity that seems impossible. It needs us to have an open mind, a willing heart, a humble spirit, and this willingness to trust in something that we can’t see.

So again, it goes against everything. We live in a world that only believes in what they can see, only accepts what makes them comfortable, and only chases what brings power and suits their egos. Those are all easy for us as humans to understand because they fit everything we want and everything we’ve been taught. Faith asks us to walk by faith and not by sight, to accept that comfort in this place only leads us in the wrong direction, and to follow Christ and live to serve Him rather than ourselves. Those are hard because they go against everything we’ve ever known.

For those of us who have made that hard choice to lay ourselves down and step into a new way of life spent following Christ by faith in His promises it’s hard to understand how anyone could reject that gift. But for those on the outside looking in, all they see is foolishness. All they see are rules, limits, and humility: everything this place hates! So there will be many who never make that choice to allow Christ into their hearts. The Bible tells us that the path is narrow that leads to eternal life and only a few find it. But it’s an even smaller number than we could imagine.

Friends, there’s nothing that has ever said that choosing faith and following this path would be easy. Our world has chosen the direction that it’s going to go and we simply can afford to follow it down that path. We will be ridiculed by those who think our faith is foolish. We will be cast aside, told to be quiet, and left to walk on the outside of this world. But that’s how it should be. So don’t question your faith because of it, allow those outside judgements to confirm that you’re doing something different.

And while we’re here let’s keep sharing the Gospel boldly even though the majority won’t like it. We’ve been left here as fishers of men and we can’t allow worldly criticism to keep us from fulfilling that eternally significant responsibility. Let the world judge, they’re going to anyway. But while this faith may be foolishness to those who reject it, it will save those who humbly accept it!

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