Stand Firm in the Faith

Posted on by korgrocker

“Don’t let anyone treat him with contempt. Send him on his way with your blessing when he returns to me. I expect him to come with the other believers. Now about our brother Apollos—I urged him to visit you with the other believers, but he was not willing to go right now. He will see you later when he has the opportunity. Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.”
1 Corinthians 16:11-14 NLT

I wonder why Apollos really didn’t want to go to Corinth? Apollos was involved from time to time in the ministry in Corinth, as Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3:5-6,  “After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow”. Previously we know that Apollos arrived in Achaia (a region in Greece that included Corinth) from Acts 18:24, 27,  “Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. … Apollos had been thinking about going to Achaia, and the brothers and sisters in Ephesus encouraged him to go. They wrote to the believers in Achaia, asking them to welcome him. When he arrived there, he proved to be of great benefit to those who, by God’s grace, had believed”. So I think we can assume that Apollos was very effective in Corinth, building on the Gospel foundation Paul had laid. Perhaps Apollos was genuinely too busy, or genuinely didn’t have the opportunity to join Timothy’s party of believers who travelled to Corinth from Ephesus. Or perhaps he was worried about the reception that might await him in Corinth. Wisdom was to wait and see whether Paul’s letter would resolve the difficulties there.

But Paul moved on to encourage the Corinthians to “be on guard”. He knew better than most of the devil’s attempts to destroy and disrupt the growing churches around the Eastern Mediterranean. Personally, he suffered much from abuse directed at him for nothing more than sharing the Good News about Jesus, and he wanted the early believers to be aware of the dangers. Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul detailed some of the hardships that he had been experiencing. “Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are so powerful! You are honoured, but we are ridiculed. Even now we go hungry and thirsty, and we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no home” (1 Corinthians 4:10-11). So Paul personally had to “be on guard” through everything he encountered.

But what does “be[ing] on guard” mean for us pilgrims? It means being proactive in protecting one’s heart, mind, and soul from things that could damage our relationship with God. There’s a great Proverb: “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life” (Proverbs 4:23), which is a warning we would do well to take note of. But we mustn’t just wait until we are overwhelmed by a heart-harming event. We must be diligent and stop it from happening in the first place. Take, for example, a film on TV that our sinful mind wants us to watch, but our spiritual mind tells us we must avoid it. Two scenarios can develop from this tussle within. One is to be obedient to our flesh, and the other is to obey our spirit. Before the wrong option has had a chance to assert itself and destroy our relationship with God, a heart-guarding choice will maintain its integrity. If we allow our hearts to be polluted by sin and allow it to take root, then our words and actions will be infected. Being on guard means we behave as a “gatekeeper,” filtering out harmful items before they can destroy us.

Peter warned believers about the devil’s role in all of this. 1 Peter 5:8, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour”. The next verse commences, “Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. …”. Similarly, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14). Note that the time-honoured excuse “the devil made me do it” has no validity for a believer in Christ, infilled, as he or she is, with the Power of the Holy Spirit. Remember the verse, “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world” (1 John 4:4)? 

There is one other thought that must inhabit a believer’s mind, and that is moral readiness. It’s the idea of living in such a way that if Jesus were to return at this very moment, we wouldn’t be ashamed of what we were doing. We don’t know when Jesus will return to this planet, but we must “be on guard” just in case His time has come. Is the angel already in the process of placing the last trumpet to his lips? A scary thought, particularly if Jesus finds us in the middle of a sinful action. So we pilgrims diligently refuse to lower our guards and let the enemy land a blow.

Dear Father God. Thank You for Your power and grace, providing all the resources we need for a victorious life. And once again. We pray, “Come Lord Jesus”. Amen.

God Does Right

Posted on by korgrocker

“The Lord is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray. He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way. The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all who keep his covenant and obey his demands.”
Psalm 25:8-10 NLT

David wrote that “the Lord … does what is right”. Of course He does, we say. What else could the God and Creator of the Universe ever do, because if He didn’t we probably wouldn’t be here at all because chaos would have prevailed. But then we think, God does what is right from his perspective, not ours. So someone who enjoys being a sinner might not be very happy at all about God doing what is right, especially when they come to stand before the Judge, sitting on the Great White Throne! There are, of course, those who would dispute that God does right, as they survey the mayhem going on around them in the world. They hold God accountable for all the bad things that are happening in the world and, they say, surely a righteous God would not allow such suffering, because it is not right that children, for example, get caught up in wars or catch infectious and debilitating diseases. But such superficial thoughts come from a general lack of understanding and knowledge about God. 

Human thoughts about righteousness are based on morals and justice. The laws of the country in which we live set out what is right and what is wrong, so that all those in the society will benefit. So there are laws against breaking a speed limit, because someone might be hurt through a speed-related collision. Or it is not right to provide a false testimony in a law court, because someone might be fined or incarcerated because of it. But where do these laws come from? Here in the UK, most of them are based on a morality that originated with God. From way back He commanded that the Israelites must not murder anyone, or steal something that belongs to someone else. Laws based on this are accepted as common sense and breaking them will result in a punishment of some kind. We also have to remember that we are all made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and so we will have within us some of God’s DNA, giving us a conscience even if we are ignorant of the law.

God “does what is right” because He is perfect and His righteousness is perfect too. So in all matters, God’s standards of morality, justice, and so on are set at a standard that is perfection. But achieving God’s gold standard of righteousness is impossible for human beings because of sin. Thankfully, through Jesus, we can attain God’s righteous because He has cleansed us from all our sins. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God“.  We call it the Divine Exchange, in that Jesus took on our sins on Calvary’s cross, and in return gave us His righteousness. What a bargain! An eternal gift of God that is beyond any price. 

But such a divine act of love cannot pass without a response, and we must live our lives accordingly. We cannot just continue in our sinful ways without taking the necessary steps to live God’s way instead of our ways. Some people give up the journey, saying that it is too hard to try and live God’s way. They become quite fatalistic about God’s righteousness, thinking that their destiny was probably pre-determined meaning that there was nothing much they could do about it, and as a result they don’t bother themselves about God and His righteousness. There was a priest in Israel called Eli and he had two sons who ministered with him. Eli’s sons were scoundrels who abused their positions as priests and Eli was too weak to do anything about it, other than offer them a mild rebuke. Even after a man of God pointed out to him the error of his ways, Eli still failed in his responsibilities. So God spoke to the young Samuel in a nighttime conversation and Eli, the priest at the time, asked Samuel what it was all about. We read in 1 Samuel 3:18, “So Samuel told Eli everything; he didn’t hold anything back. “It is the Lord’s will,” Eli replied. “Let him do what he thinks best””. We can be like that sometimes, giving up on doing something that we know we should do, but we lack the will and courage to do it. But Paul wrote some encouraging words in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up“. Hebrews 12:12-13, “So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong“. Because of God’s love, we have all the resources we need to live in the light of God’s righteousness. Romans 8:37, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us“.

We pilgrims are on a journey to become more like Jesus. Romans 8:29-30, “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory”. Let us not give up. Our challenges and difficulties in this life are insignificant compared with the time we will spend with Jesus in eternity.

Dear Father God. In times of trial and uncertainty, grant us the strength to persevere. Help us to remember that our struggles are not signs of weakness, but opportunities to grow in faith. May we find your guidance and strength in every step we take, even when the path seems unclear. Help us to trust in your plan for us, even when we don’t fully understand it. Grant us the courage to not give up, but to continue seeking your will, knowing that your love and grace will see us through. Amen.