Walking By Faith Part 2: Faith That Overcomes Series

Faith that Overcomes

One of the points I tried to make especially clear in part one of this message is that the enemy of our souls is trying his best to persuade us to neglect or even abandon our faith in God. And, unfortunately, he’s been quite successful—especially so in the last decade or so. You can see that in the incredibly rapid escalation of disdain and even abject hatred much of the world seems to have against Christians today. There is now a concerted effort by the powers that be, to slander, intimidate, silence and eradicate people of faith. This is constantly happening through media propaganda, sometimes it’s open hostility— hate crimes against churches and individuals, sometimes it’s done through certain groups accusing Christians of hate crimes for simply preaching what the Word of God clearly teaches about controversial moral and social issues that have somehow become political.

But that’s not all; In public schools across our nation, from kindergarten through college, our children are being indoctrinated and groomed under our very noses, to approve of and even participate in the Godless immorality that has inundated our society. You add to that the overwhelming anti-Christian influence constantly being directly downloaded into the minds of our children via social media.... and what you have is a perfect storm, that will capsize and drown the faith of millions of unsuspecting Christians—no wonder there is a mental and spiritual health crisis in this country today—especially among our young people!

In light of this stark reality, I for one, am utterly amazed and terribly disappointed that more of our pastors are not warning the churches of this clear and present danger that has already claimed millions of souls. In fact, I believe the deafening silence of the church is largely responsible for the steep spiritual decline we are seeing today.

We cannot afford to be passive or ambiguous for the sake of political correctness—we have to allow the Word of God to ring loud and clear, not only to warn the sinners but to alert the saints!

1 Corinthians 14:8 “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?”

To give you an idea of how rapidly the enemy is gaining ground in this spiritual war, I’ll give you a recent example; Most of you know that we’re still waiting on the conference to find a permanent pastor for our district. A few weeks ago, we learned that there is a very critical shortage of young men pursuing that calling these days—nowhere near enough to fill all the open and soon to be open districts. But only eight or ten years ago, there were so many theology majors graduating seminary, hoping to become pastors, that some of them had to take secular jobs because there simply weren’t enough pastor positions to go around—and yet, today there’s nowhere near enough young men who are answering the call to ministry.

What happened? Why is it that more and more young people who were raised in the church and even went through our schools are now leaving the faith? I was talking to a pastor about this a while back and he told me that it seemed that the more educated our youth are, the more likely they are to leave the church. That leaves us to wonder, exactly what kind of education are they getting? I would suggest to you today that their faith simply isn’t strong enough to stand against the flood of anti-Christian propaganda they are constantly encountering on social media, television, music, movies, video games, and even in the curriculum of some of our own academies and universities.

Authentic, biblical Christianity is under attack! And brothers and sisters, I believe, as Christians, we have an obligation to boldly speak out against this attack on morality, the attack on the Christian family and the attack on the Christian faith. We should speak out at our local school board meetings, city council meetings, our churches; we should speak out by casting our votes against politicians who openly condone and promote immorality... we must be proactive and not stand idly by as our children, grandchildren and other loved ones are being swept away by this tidal wave of evil.

As Christians, if we do a great job standing up and speaking out for the moral principles we find in the Word of God, we just may slow the progression of evil, but it will still come. The most important thing we can do by far, is to nurture, grow and guard our faith, and do all we can to teach our children and grandchildren to do the same, and to teach them to recognize where and how the enemy is working today, because if we don’t educate them on what is morally right or wrong, what is good or evil, you better believe the world will be happy to educate them for us.