As children of God we will stand out from the crowd. We must accept this truth and not recoil from it. The Lord’s ways expose us, we are lights set on a hill. So long as we live according to His Word, it will be apparent whose we are. This causes us to be labelled as weird or “taking this God thing too seriously” as they say, thus mistaking our devotion for religious fanatism.We will be the object of scorn and ridicule.So for fear of standing out, some succumb to compromise, conforming to worldly ways in attempts to fit in. We should not refuse to be transformed because we fear being seen as odd for we are strangers and sojourners in this world.
The cost of standing out
Some believers fear that they will be unrelatable and will face a lonely path and thus settle for surface level sanctification if ever. They fear the cost that is attached to truly following the Lord. Therefore, they choose to have one foot in the world and the other in the Lord, attenuating the potency of their devotion and witness. The Lord said to the church in Laodicea that He will spew it out of His mouth because it was neither hot or cold(Rev 3:15-16). This area of compromise feels safe and comforting. It does not threaten the way we order our lives nor our preferences. Many will look at us bewildered at how we are not engaging in sinful activities as they are. The Word says to not envy the sinner(Prov 23:17). It is written that faith made Moses when he was grown up, refuse to be called the son of the king’s daughter. He preferred to suffer with Gods people rather than enjoy sin for a little while. He reckoned that to suffer scorn for the Messiah was worth far more than all the treasures of Egypt…(Heb 11:24-26). He chose to stand on the side of righteousness even when it caused him due to valuing the Lord above worldly treasure.
What standing out entails
Standing out entails more than preaching the Word. It is how we conduct our lives on a daily basis, for the purpose of making Him known. We are living epistles. People look at us and get a glimpse of who the Lord is, His standard and His ways. But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light(1Peter 2:9). We usually celebrate the fact that we are a chosen race, His priests, a holy nation, his own chosen people however the reason why He made us that was for the purpose of proclaiming his wonderful acts. The Lord created us for His renown;For as the sash clings to the waist of a man, so I have caused the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to Me,’ says the Lord, ‘that they may become My people, for renown, for praise, and for glory; but they would not hear( Jer 13:11) How we live matters and serves as a witness to a dark world.By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith(Heb 11:7) When we walk by faith and obedience instead of hiding it we, like Noah, condemn the world. We show that it is possible to obey the Lord and their disobedience and rejection of the Lord is a choice. Why? because we are proof of it. Furthermore, the Word says that people suppress the truth in unrighteousness. When we live the way they do we do the same and the truth concerning the Lord does not reign.We are likened to billboards that echo Gods existence and that is why we cannot conform to the standard of this world. We will silence our witness, lose our light and lose our saltiness, which gives people a taste of who the Lord is.
The ever increasing light of the believer
When we get saved, our lives cease to be our own. We are connected to the Kingdom of Heaven and the will of the Lord. Salvation commences with the believer. The Lord transforms the believer and he or she is fortified to take responsibility over their own life and live deliberately in light of the principle and laws of the Lord which govern this realm below and His Kingdom. The light extends and is introduced into our families. With our presence and spiritual alertness and watchfulness, darkness and patterns that persisted or even seek to enter are thwarted or resisted. The light extends to the lost. Some individuals will not follow Christ because we evangelized, but on account of how they experienced the love of God through us. This testimony of Riaan Swiegelaar, a former South African Satanist( Satanic church co-founder)exemplifies this. He was shown love by a Christian woman, a poignant experience which marked his life: In mid-May, Swiegelaar gave his last interview as a member of the SASC on the CapeTalk radio station. Following the interview, a woman working for the station, whose name he would not reveal, came to him and demonstrated God’s love in an unexpected way.
“I told her, ‘I don’t believe in Jesus and I don’t believe Jesus Christ exists’ because I didn’t. She came to me after the interview, after I said that and she hugged me and she held me in a way that I’ve never been loved,” Swiegelaar said.
Therefore, the way we live has ramifications that are far reaching beyond ourselves. Failure to commit to the Lord in our actions means all that is stated in this piece is thwarted.
The last call by Charles Finney: Every christian makes an impression by his conduct and witnesses either for one side or the other. His looks, dress, whole demeanor, make a constant impression on one side or the other. He cant help testifying for or against religion He is either gathering with Christ or scattering abroad. At every step you tread on chords that will vibrate to all eternity. Every time you move, you touch keys whose sound will re-echo all over dark caverns and vaults of hell. Every movement of your lives, you are exerting a tremendous influence that will tell on the immortal interests of souls all around you