Godly Living Hurts Sometimes

Godly Living Hurts Sometimes

Putting God first in your life is the only way to go. Anything less than that is to fritter your short life away, focusing on things that will become insignificant in the miss of a heartbeat. That’s right – 60 seconds after your heart stops beating, the big and important matters of life will be totally insignificant. The only thing that will count then is the extent to which you lived your life for God and the level of intimacy you enjoyed with Christ.

Living for God won’t be easy. Run from the ‘Television Prosperity Gospel’. Show biz is just making a fast buck off religion. Celebrity preachers promise a rich and rosy life if you put God first in your life. But the Apostle Paul in his last letter to younger Timothy said just the opposite:

All that will live godly in Christ Jesus

shall suffer persecution.

(2Timothy 3:12)

Paul stated it so definitely. It’s a fact of life – it’s to be expected. It’s the norm. As Eugene Peterson paraphrased the verse: “Anyone who wants to live all out for Christ is in for a lot of trouble; there’s no getting around it.”

A godly life is different than an ungodly life; so the differences are sure to be strikingly obvious. In fact, the less obvious the differences are, the poorer the job I am doing as a Christian. The margin of difference between me and the world should be widening – not contracting. If the gap is narrowing, I am failing.

In an immodest fashion world – a modest Christian stands out like a light-bulb. In a pleasure-seeking world, a Christian whose chief pleasure is to please the Lord sticks out like a sore-thumb. In an immoral sex-oriented culture, a clean and moral Christian stands alone in school or at work.

Occasionally the attacks will be raw and brutal. Hostile swear words may be hurled at you or belittling and demeaning tricks to shame and embarrass you will be played while others stand back and laugh. It hurts. It isn’t the crackling fire burning your flesh at the stake – but it is very real persecution.

An all-out life for Christ will create a certain loneliness for you. You’ll feel like a misfit at times. They won’t understand you. They may be polite to you, but you’ll know you aren’t in their inner circle when it comes to the things that excite them. That’s the unsaved.

Worse still is the hurt when fellow Christians snub you. For example, you get the sense you are bugging other Christian girls because you dress modestly and because you have chosen to honor the Lord with your long hair (1Corinthians 11). It hurts when you feel on the outside of the inside. It takes a lot of courage for a Christian guy to push his chair back and walk out of the room when other Christian guys are popping in one of those movies. It hurts when you know they are calling you a holy-roller behind your back. It stings when you know a bunch of your Christian friends got together but they didn’t invite you because you might cramp things abit.

Those who live a life for God WILL feel pressure, rejection and WILL experience snubbing, persecution and trouble. But within a very short time you are going to see the One who endured infinitely more than you will ever suffer. Do you think you will have any regrets then about what you endured down here? Then you will see it as an honor to have suffered for the cause of Christ. When He thanks you for your love and faithfulness you will fall at His Feet and worship Him.

Walk carefully and closely with the Lord today.

Warmly in Christ

Peter Ramsay

peter@heaven4sure.com