Foreigners in a Hostile World

 Heyo! For anyone who doesn't know already, I have played a LOT of games in my lifetime - from board games, to videogames, to sports games, all the way to mind games (messing with my siblings). You and I may not like the same kinds of games, but I think we can all agree that games are fun. I think part of what makes games fun is that they each have their own set of rules that the players have to abide by - these make the game the way that it is. For example, imagine trying to play dodgeball but no matter what happens no one can get out. It might be fun at first, until you realize that you're just throwing dodgeballs at each other until someone gets bored or whatever. That's not... a game. You know? A game needs to have certain rules so that it is fair, works properly, and allows everyone to have some fun and competition. The world we live in today is a lot like a game in that respect. There need to be rules to live by so that the world runs properly, people can live at peace with each other, and everyone can have opportunity to "pursue happiness", as the American dream would put it. However, when I look around, even at just this country, it seems like everyone is living by different rules. Either they mix and match rules from others or they make up new rules as they go along. No one truly agrees on any rules, so there is no peace, the world definitely doesn't run properly, and most people are too busy struggling to get by to even think about pursuing happiness. The "American Dream" doesn't work.

As Christians, we believe that God created the world (as outlined in the beginning of the book of Genesis) and He established the world order, set it in motion, and provided the rules for the "game" of life. He revealed all of this in the Bible so that we would know how we are supposed to live in this world He created. Unfortunately, if you read through the book of Genesis in the Bible, you'll quickly find out that it didn't take very long for mankind to break the rules and do their own thing. Ever since then, humanity has struggled with the consequences of rebelling against God's way of doing things, and that's what we see in our world today. Our society doesn't want to do things God's way, and they become very hostile toward those who do. So, the question is, how do we live the Christian life in a non-Christian world? How do we survive as foreigners in a hostile world?

In total, there are four parts to the answer to that question, and today we are going to look at the first two.

Step 1, the very first thing you need to do to even attempt to live the Christian life in a non-Christian world, is to be sure you are of the faith. Romans 10:9-10 says this: "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." There is NO POINT in trying to live the Christian life if you're not even a Christian. It won't do you any good and you'll fail over and over and over again. The good news is, becoming a Christian is not as complicated as some of you might believe. Just like Paul said in Romans 10, out your faith in Jesus and what He did for you on the cross. Let me give you a quick overview of what we're talking about here - according to the Bible, Jesus is the Son of God who came to the earth as a man about 2,000 years ago, lived a sinless, perfect life and then died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, taking all the punishment that we deserve so that we don't have to, and then was raised from the dead 3 days later. If you believe that and trust that your sins are forgiven through Jesus, you are a Christian.

Here's the thing though, according to Paul we must declare with our mouths "Jesus is Lord". A "lord" is someone with authority, a master or ruler. So when we declare "Jesus is Lord," we are declaring that Jesus is our master, our ruler, the main authority figure in our lives. If Jesus is our Lord, that means we submit to His authority, we follow and obey Him.

Step 2 naturally follows from this. Step 2 to living the Christian life in a non-Christian world is to acknowledge the authority of God's Word (the Bible) in your life. When you think of the Bible as God's letter to us, which comes with instructions for living and information about who He is and what He is doing, then it would make total sense for us to acknowledge the Bible as an authority in our lives. It would be just like receiving a letter from our lord. Where we get tripped up, however, is that a lot of the time we treat the Bible like the instructions for a game. Take UNO as an example. UNO has specific rules for each card and how to play the game. But depending on where you go, different people play the game differently. There are variations of the rules (stacking versus no stacking, drawing one card when you can't play anything or drawing until you can play, etc.). I think we tend to treat the Bible like the rules in UNO - the Bible gives us a baseline, but we can pick and choose which rules we actually want to follow. And this is why step 2 is so important to living the Christian life in a non-Christian world. The world tells us its okay to pick and choose, but the Bible is clear - its all or nothing. We either submit completely to God's way, or we are in rebellion against God. There is no in-between.

So then, to really acknowledge the Word of God as an authority in our lives, we have to surrender our authority of self. What do I mean by that? Well, before becoming a Christian, we all have different authorities over us - our parents, teachers, the government, etc. But over all of those we have the authority of self. This is our ability to choose who we are going to listen, if we listen to anyone at all. Like, yeah, I might get in trouble if I don't listen to my parents, but ultimately it is my decision whether to obey them or not. The authority of self boils down to this: "I do what I want." As a Christian, we surrender this authority of self over to God. In making Jesus our Lord, we say, "God, I am no longer in charge of my own life, You are. You make the decisions, You say what is right, and I will follow Your lead." It boils down to: "I do what God wants." If we try to live the Christian life, but don't surrender the authority of self, we are in for a lifetime of trouble.

Isaiah 45:9 says this: "Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'The potter has no hands'?" If the Bible is true, that means God made the world. He is the Maker, He is the "potter", and we are what He has created. If He is the Maker, what right do we have to challenge His design? What right do we have to disagree with He has said? When we acknowledge the authority of the Bible in our lives, we are saying that we trust that God knows what He is talking about. That means we don't get to decide what is right or wrong, we go by what He says is right or wrong.

If you are sitting there and you want to live the way God says is right and good, then the first things you need to do is ask yourself these two questions: Have you put your faith in Jesus? Have you surrendered yourself to the authority of God's Word? These two things set the foundation for everything else we believe in, and they give us solid ground upon which to stand for our faith. The world we live in despises God's way, and they will try to push down and destroy anyone who tries to live His way. Don't let them push you down.