The unsaved world has always been going in a different direction from Christianity.  Before it was called Christianity, it was called, “The Way,” because it was clearly a different way of living and a different way of looking at life.  It was that difference that brought persecution on Christians, many of whom were put to death for their commitment to “The Way.”

It seems that there was a time, however, when even unsaved people had a “moral compass” within them, and there was that certain “honor among thieves.”  Today, however, that moral compass seems to be lost, and just as the Bible foretold, people call bad, “good,” and good, “bad.”

The church has a tremendous opportunity in these days of spiritual darkness.  The greater the darkness, the greater the impact of even the smallest light.  This is our time to seek God’s power upon our lives through prayer, then to rise up and boldly proclaim, “Thus saith the Lord.”  Most of the Christ-rejecting world will despise the message of God, and His gospel, but there will be some whose hearts will be opened to believe.

As believers in Christ, we are in “The Way,” and we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

I don’t mean using your feet to get where you are going, nor am I talking about exercise.  The Bible uses the word “walk” multiple times in almost every book of the Bible to refer to the way we live.  In this sense, everybody walks through life.

In Genesis 5:24, we are told that “Enoch walked with God, and God took Him, and He was not.”  That last phrase, “He was not,” primarily means that he was not there any longer, he was gone to be with God.  The Bible also gives us some insight about Enoch in Hebrews 11 and in the little one chapter book of Jude.  In looking at those passages, we can see that he also was not conformed to this world, he was not controlled by this world, and he was not condemned with this world.  We are told that he pleased God.

Throughout this walk through life, it is extremely important that we please God.  Every aspect of our life will be better for doing so, because it is what we were made for.  When the walk comes to an end, it will be very important to us that we have pleased God.  Pleasing God is a one day, one minute at a time endeavor, and it is a decision that we must make.  One song says, “Daily walking close to Thee, grant it Jesus, is my plea; I’ll be satisfied with Thee, as I walk, let me walk close to Thee.”

It is true that all sin is equally bad in the eyes of God, but it is also true that some sins have a greater effect on society, than others.  It is true that political correctness and biblical correctness are most often opposed to one another.  It is true that we are to love people and treat them with dignity and respect, but it is equally true that we are not to sanction sin, whether in our life, or in the lives of others.  So what are we to think about homosexuality?  The short answer is that the Bible is to be our final authority for faith and practice.

We all have dreams and plans, along with a general idea of how we think things ought to go in our life.  We all know that there are times when life takes a different turn than we had hoped.  We may see our retirement account melting away under the current adverse market, we may find our job being dissolved, when we are past the age of easy job finding, or we may get a jolting diagnosis from the doctor, just when we thought we were beginning to get control of some things.  On and on the list could go, but the truth is, there are times when we face great disappointment.

First, to rebound from disappointment, we must accept completely that God knows and cares about our situation.  He did not cause adversity in our life.  Jesus came to give us life, and that more abundantly.  It is the devil, who is the thief who has come to steal, kill, and destroy.  We live in a sin-cursed world, and bad things do happen.  It may very well be that we have made some bad choices, and the adversity in our life has come as a result of those choices.  I remember one man who was in the hospital with lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking, and he looked at me and said, “I know the Lord will not put more on you than you can stand.”  Well, the Lord did not put that on him.  He put it on himself by direct disobedience to the teachings of God’s word, concerning how we are to care for our physical bodies.  Yet, in spite of bad doings, God is good, and His mercy endures forever.  Even when we have done it to ourselves, God loves us and can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

We also need to understand that God’s blessing is attained by meditating on the word of God, the Bible.  We must know it before we can meditate on it, but most people know enough to meditate on.  To be blessed is to be inwardly happy.  Not a superficial happiness, but a deep knowledge that everything is alright, because God is in control.  To be blessed is the God-given ability to live in the exceeding great and precious promises of God.  Disappointment melts quickly away in the light of the promises of God.