Be A Bold Christian: Say No to the Devil!

Be A Bold Christian: Say No to the Devil!           Kelly Durant 1-24-21

 

Colossians 2:6-8

6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:

7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Proverbs 28:1

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

 

2. How many of you learned to say no at a young age? You learned when you were only months old, do you know how I know? I learned by experience with our 5 kids that even a baby can shut his lips so hard that spoon of mashed potatoes cannot be forced in no matter how hard you try! We all have learned to say, “No!” since the time we were little.

 

Later kids you did not know were bad would say, “Get on the merry-go round, we will give you spin; alright”, you reply. And soon you find out that in the super fast spinning what they really wanted to do was not play but see you fly off of it and roll in the dirt so they could laugh at you! So you learn to say, “No!” in life to those who want to trick you, spin you, and then harm you.

 

Christians must learn to say, No!” to a lot of things in life! As soon as you accept Jesus, Satan and his demons get on your tail and they do everything possible to make you regret speaking up that you have Him as your Lord, and want you to shut up! Weird people crawl out of their hidden holes to mock and offer you the world if only you will compromise, accept ‘the pleasures of sin for a season’, or join the causes of the corrupt people in the world who are the experts, who have their high positions and PHDs, and are so much better than you! Condescendingly these evil people classify Christians and those with the pure values of Christians, as fools, ignorant ones deceived by conspiracies and fairy tales, and that you are a danger to society! Stand up and say, “no!” to these ugly people!

 

3. I saw as a young man that I needed to man-up and become as solid as a rock, because everyone wants to convince you of their opinion and you feel stupid and hypocrite if you change from one week to the next. Making the Bible with Jesus as the rock of your foundation eliminates all the stress of one having to get convinced or not convinced on all the vastly different belief systems, governmental systems, and philosophies that are always aggressively recruiting members. It’s by faith, but then God does great things to reveal He is there with you.

 

The Salvation Army’s training for Corps Cadets has the title on their training books as ‘Bold’ and that is what we expect young people to be, bold to defend their faith in Jesus! Jesus warned us that if you are called be salt, and have no flavor or kick, then one is worthless to be tossed away as dirt! Matthew 5:13-16. Bold means saying no to the devil and being salt and light!

 

With the desire for my own children to be ‘bold’ I even named our oldest with the middle name of Lion, because in the verse today of Provers 28:1, I wanted him to be ‘bold as a lion’ to confront all the evil in the world. And he has been faithful and is a witness of the faith to thousands by communicating in ASL. He said, “No!” many times to perverts and drug dealers!

 

4. So, the quicker all of us learn in life to say , “Yes!” to the Lord, and “No!” to the people of the world the better off we will be! Why am I bringing up this topic? Because I think many Christians hear too much the voices of the world, the voices false religious teachers, the voices of imperious politics, the voices of people with twisted causes trying to shove down our throats their corrupting agendas that are opposite of the Lord’s. The 10 hours a day of media does affect the minds of mega millions of people and most easily get mislead!

 

I got deceived when I was young (18-20), when gurus were popular and when churches were old-fashioned, formalistic, and unattractive.  I thank God for a few good friends back then that discussed Bible with me to help me untangle all of my misconceptions and flawed thinking which was ‘conformed to the world’s trends’. (See Romans 12) One verse that made me feel very uncomfortable bringing on conviction (which is a good thing when coming from God’s Word) was one of the verses of today: 8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

 

I deeply reflected inside, could it be I am deceived by philosophies? In today’s language this translates into being political correctness, and sanctioned acceptable ‘truths’. What a warning! Could it be I am deceived, vain, and following men who are of the world? Oh, how it hurt my pride to have to admit I had been following the wrong thing and the wrong people! I had invested several years into learning about yoga, world religions, and the hippie movement. I finally was coming around to see that Jesus Christ was the truth and all the rest was an illusion and irrelevant to bring about a better society and salvation to confused hopeless suffering depressed people. Thank God I had that revelation (also, God sent me some dreams as well) at age 21 because now it is evident some people older than myself now are still deluded into following people, causes, philosophies, and illusive agendas more than Christ. Be patient with folks who are deluded, God will give them changes, so pray for them!

 

5. Getting back to the verses, how can you and I prevent getting on the wrong path, or be deceived being protected from being misled by the world’s so called leaders who seek to use as the Egyptians did the Israelites? See verse 6: ‘As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him’:  The Christians I know that are strong, have no second thoughts about saying no and standing up to the perversions and corruption in the world. They are protected from not falling into the trap of the trends of the world by keeping their faith alive. Their walk of faith includes, reading the Bible daily, praying, fellowshipping with other Christians, and being irreproachable in their morals, values, and service to others. Psalm 15:4 (a)

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honors them that fear the Lord.

 

Strong and bold Christians will denounce and oppose evil works and the people doing evil works and the unrepentant guilty people of the world will hate, persecute, you and me. They will spread lies and label us as undesirables, ‘those who don’t honor Cesar’ as god,…. but God rewards you, me, and all Christians with peace and we know His eternal rewards in heaven are for us. We must be like Martin Luther who said: “Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me! Amen”

 

And verse 7; Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. There two points here, we must build up our faith and make our foundation in Jesus by learning; that can be from Godly teachers and directly from the Holy Scripture itself. And don’t miss the part about being thankful! Unthankfulness is destroying our community relations today! Unthankful people who disrespect everyone are dividing us and making us hostile; and Satan loves the practice of ‘divide and conquer’! So many people seem to be very unthankful for their jobs, their parents, their teachers, their country, their church, their, leaders, and their lot in life (everyone else is to blame) and they have lost their focus on Jesus and see that this world is not our home and we are just passing through.

 

6. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” This lesson is revealed in the Bible many times. Unthankful people, those who become judgmental and hard towards others seem to always end up reaping a punishment. For one, they lose friends because they themselves do not value you, me, others, or even God! God is a jealous God and abandoning Him and not loving your neighbor is a huge mistake that brings on consequences!

 

I bring this up because there are Christians that do drift away from Jesus and His teachings (we are in the days of apostacy) and they lose their boldness to defend Him and the morals and principles of the faith.  Sadly, some get conditioned to be complainy as the world’s people are and then they get in a rut, in a state of losing their Holy Spirit’s power and they just repeat like a parrot the words of the subversive ones in world. And in that depressing mentally captive state, they often progress into bad health. They stop being rooted in the faith and so then they then wait for the world to tell them what to speak. And this world is temporarily run by Satan so basically they are backslidden and controlled by Satan not even being aware of it! Remember the fate of the Israelites in the desert! 1 Corinthians 10:10 nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

 

Here is warning from God over those who are not remaining with Him but go their own way: 

Romans 1: 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. 

 

7. So be careful and stand up for Jesus even if it causes you to lose a few friends! Stand bold for Him or you will be ashamed of your naked soul when you face the Lord in the Great White Throne judgment. In you don‘t stand for something (in our case Jesus) then you will fall for anything! Pray everyday to not get tricked with any subversive talk, persecution, or a temptation to go with the flow of the world that is on the wide road to hell. The people of the world are headed for destruction, and narrow is our path that leads to life; stay on it! 

 

One final thought referring to persecution, all of us should speak up when we learn about people trying to establish perverted laws in our community. The endgame of Satan is to make legal everything that God has given us commandments against! These are laws that accommodate the destruction of life, self-destruction, and betrayal of your family and neighbors. Satan basically wants all human life divided and killed by any means possible, be it by war, virus, or persecution! Pray hard because things that on the surface that seem to be for our good may be turned and used for our erasing and termination. If you resist (‘Resist Satan, James 4:7) and expose the injustices of any one of his ungodly laws, then you will be attacked. Concentration camps and death squads are not here again yet (in the U.S.) but some people in the media are saying we need to bring them back to control some people! They exist in several countries! Now that is pure hate to want that for another but we keep on, follow Jesus who taught us to love! So here are some words from a Christian man who suffered in a Nazi concentration camp and from his words we learn an imperative lesson that we must do our part to expose and resist the slipper slope of evil, dictatorial laws that will get us killed.  

 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

 because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.  By Martin Niemöller 

 

8. Be bold! Teach the young people to be bold! Young people don’t need 300 fake friends who are controlled by the media anti-Christ system, you only need one or three real friends to be happy! And in our Salvation Army Corps you can have a few dozen friends! Christians need to unite in these days of so much delusion, lying propaganda, and wickedness. Ask, talk, and consult (see Psalm 1), and pray!

 

These are trying times. Some people will have to change their lifestyle in order to keep their faith strong; they may need to homeschool their children with God’s views, they may need to move away from certain danger zones getting burned down, they might even need to lose a job over standing up for Jesus. And as I always say, “God never takes something away without giving you back something better!” Psalm 37:25 I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. (Read all of Psalm 37)

 

Pray for discernment over all decisions! Not all people in the world are Christians and they do foolish and unwise things! In a certain time period of the ancient Greeks, it was thought to be a bold and noble act to jump off of a cliff and kill yourself!? The trends of the world as you see are not God’s standards! So not all popular or legitimatized current events are what God wants for you and me! Stand for what Jesus stands for and God will be on your side! See victory soon!