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Standing in a Raging River
8/16/07
by: Pastor Ryan Throop
Imaging trying to stand up straight in the middle of a fast-flowing river. As the water beats into your body, constantly trying to carry you downstream, you struggle to even stand up straight and fight the fast-moving current. Living the Christian life is all too similar. As the river of culture is constantly beating against us, our enemy is hard at work trying to get us to fall in our Christian walk and be carried away by the culture of this World. Wether it's creation vs. evolution or subtle messages such as, "if it makes you happy, it must be okay," culture is trying to move us further away from God.
In Daniel 3, we meet three dudes that stood for their beliefs, regardless of what the World was telling them. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were faced with a choice to either bow down to a golden image (something God had told them never to do) or be put to death for standing up for their faith. The easy thing for them to do would have been to fall down and worship the idol because it's what everyone else around them was doing. But instead, they stood for the Truth by not bowing down, when everyone around them did.
In our lives, people around us say and do things that are against God's desires for us as Christians. The Bible is full of ways to follow God and run to Him. However, it takes work, dedication, and standing up when everyone else is bowing down. As a teen, it's so easy for us to just fall in line with everyone else...laugh at a dirty joke so we don't seem stuck up, become a bystander when our friends begin to act unloving toward others, and even compromise our own purity because of relationship we pursue.
God has called us to do what is right in His eyes, regardless of the people or powers above us. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn't wait for permission to do what was right: they stood for God even in the face of death.
For more, read Daniel 3:1-18
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