The enemy’s camp is fully funded. It’s not on a shoestring budget or barely getting by; it is a financial powerhouse. In 2022 alone, the most prominent murder mill in the world, responsible for close to half a million innocent lives snuffed out before any of them could feel the sun on their face, had a revenue of over two billion dollars, with another two and a half billion dollars in assets. If money or the abundance thereof were the metric by which we measure God’s blessing, then we would have to conclude that the most ruthless and profane among the godless are blessed beyond measure.
That the devil’s minions would attempt to throw money around
to buy influence, acceptance, and validation is not uncommon or unexpected. Every
time they’ve needed the masses to be nudged one way or another by those they
deemed their spiritual betters, their willingness to throw legal tender at the
problem was evident. The only unknown was the number of zeroes it would take to
make it a reality, but they figured that one out soon enough. For some, it didn’t
even take a big check, just the promise of rubbing elbows with the influential
and revered.
I’m sure they justified it to themselves somehow, whether via
the greater good theory or the underlying belief that the sheep just didn’t
know what was good for them and so must be made to see the light of reason. Big
names with big churches and big platforms sold out and, if necessary, even
brought Jesus into the mix, insisting that He, too, would comply with mandates
and tyrants if given half the chance.
If your convictions are for sale to the highest bidder, then
there is neither stability, steadfastness, nor undeterred purposefulness in
your heart. We’ve seen it all too often, wherein men are turned to and fro
depending on which way the wind is blowing on a particular day, and their
principles are situational and given to change at the drop of a hat.
Each will have an explanation for the hard turn, whether it’s
a change of heart or an evolution in the way they see the world. Some of the
slimier ones resort to using love and tolerance as a distraction from their
cowardice, conveniently glossing over the fact that God didn’t have a change of
heart or evolve to greater enlightenment; they just thought they knew better
than Him, or whatever the godless were offering was worth the betrayal.
And yet, we keep defending the indefensible because we don’t
want to deal with the reality that the men we’ve put our faith in have betrayed
it, and those we trusted to provide spiritual sustenance have been dripping
venom into our hearts for countless years.
Our first mistake was putting our trust in men. Our second
mistake was believing them over the words of scripture. If you’ve ever wondered
how the modern-day church became what it is, those two choices were the
beginning of our downfall. The more we hoped in men, the less we looked to
Jesus, and the more our hearts were filled with the desire for the things of
this earth, the less we yearned for the things above.
Paul wasn’t bold and steadfast because it was his nature. He
became bold and steadfast because he had come to the knowledge of the truth of
who Jesus is, and that gave him boldness to preach a risen Christ and
steadfastness to endure all manner of hardship for His name’s sake.
Jesus makes us more than we are and gives us the necessary
tools to overcome, persevere, and live out our calling as long as our focus is
on Him and not ourselves. Men give in to cowardice because their comfort rather
than Christ becomes the center of their universe. They give in to compromise
because they’re unwilling to pay the cost of remaining faithful to Jesus when
the road gets hard and the enemy gets vicious. It’s not that God can’t work
through us; it’s that we rather He not because we deem the cost of being used
by Him too much to bear.
We look at all the anecdotal evidence in the aggregate and
conclude that given enough razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand, most people won’t
even notice that we’re talking out both sides of our mouth, and little if any, of
what we say stirs true commitment, repentance, and faithfulness to Christ in
the hearts of those who hear us. What’s more, those who’ve watered down the
message of the gospel seem to be prospering. If our ultimate goal is self
rather than the glory of God, why put ourselves through the fires of
sanctification and self-denial? Why be hated by the world when we can be
double-tongued, duplicitous, and faithless and still be first in line at every
potluck?
This is why our purpose must be well-defined and immovable.
If it’s not, there will always be opportunities to skirt the uncomfortable
parts, tame down the truth, or omit certain steps required in men’s spiritual
growth to make our own walk less austere. A steadfast and well-defined purpose
is our compass in the storm of compromise.
Timothy thoroughly studied three areas of Paul’s life: his
doctrine, his walk, and his steadfastness. He’d passed the acid test on all
three counts, and Paul reminds Timothy of this to reinforce the idea that it is
through lived experience that he’d drawn the conclusions he had regarding the
Christian walk and the prerequisites required for being a good and faithful
soldier of Jesus Christ.
We rarely consider how much harder those of the early church
had it than we do in our modern age. Sure, the disciples walked with Jesus,
learned from Him, and saw His life, but a few decades on, all the next
iteration of the church had were second-hand accounts and testimonies of those
who knew someone who’d walked with Jesus.
It’s not as though they had the written Word to turn to for
guidance, and those who oversaw the established religious system of the time
weren’t much help because they were set on the destruction of the followers of
Christ. Through it all, through the waves of martyrdom, through the
persecutions, through the hardships and travails, the true body of Christ
endured, persevered, and had the wherewithal to pass the truth on to the next
generation.
It took the devil a while to figure it out, but he eventually
realized that if you can corrupt the young before the seed of truth is planted
in their hearts, if you can take easily impressionable minds and steer them
toward darkness before they ever know the light exists, given enough time there
will be no one left to pass the truth down to the next generation, nor will
there be any who will be receptive to it in it.
Even if he’d figured it out, until recently, it was almost
impossible to corrupt the minds of an entire generation wholesale. Parents
still parented, schools still taught math and history, churches still preached
Jesus, and the stream of corruption could be dammed up by unplugging the family
television.
Posted on 26 August 2024 | 11:10 am
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