Stand Firm: Don't Quit!

Do you acquiesce to your culture and to your traditions? Or do you stand firm for what you know is true and real about the Word of God, or according to the Word of God? Are you able to stand firm especially when you know a backlash of negativity will be directed at you? Are you able to do this when not only your community but your family turns against you too, when they are deliberate and intentional in their position against you?

Their continued stand against you will cause great hurt over time and will begin a chain of events that will have a long term negative affect on your functioning.

Standing against cultural beliefs does cause a division. Often the divide is so great with no hope of finding common ground. Reconciliation will not occur. Trying to force an appeasement based on Biblical compromise will only end in disaster.

As a believer, I would rather suffer hardship than conform to a societal requirement which is contrary to the Word of God. Yielding to compromise weakens your faith, and leaves you open to concede more and more of what you believe. Concession may allow for amicable familial and societal relationships, but it will compromise your faith. Be warned, left unchecked, you will compromise the Gospel leaving yourself open to spiritual disaster. It may be a slow down-spiraling, but you will end up in a pit.

It’s not worth it. Don’t compromise. It is better to be alone, and struggle through the hurt of broken relationships with family and associates than to bring reproach to the Lord, and what He has accomplished on the cross for those who place their trust and faith in Him. Are you able to stand strong and victorious in the face of a challenge to compromise what you believe is true?

• For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11-13).

• All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).

• Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

• Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn (2 Peter 3:11-12).

#faithful #culture #family #persecution #Bible