This world is not my home,
I’m just a-passing through.
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
We’ve sung the hymn, but do we live as if we really believe it? That’s a question that Alistair Begg addresses in a wonderful little book entitled Brave by Faith, and subtitled “God-sized Confidence in a Post-Christian World.” He introduces the book with the above words of the hymn, and then gets right to the point.
“The fact of the matter is that it has always been true that we are strangers in and to this world. It has just been clouded, obscured by the size and influence and legal protection of the church in most of the Western world. But this world is not actually our home. We’re not supposed to be treating this life the way other people treat it, as if this is the be-all and end-all of everything, or as if as Christians we can have a comfortable, respectable, prosperous life here and look forward to even more of those things in eternity.
“Secularism pushes back again and again against what the Bible says about sexual ethics, about salvation, about education, about the role and reach of the state, or about matters of public welfare. Public opinion has turned against Christians.
“Suddenly, as a minority group within an increasingly secularized nation, we are finding out how it feels to be outsiders. And we don’t like it. We’re not used to it. And it’s easy to become bewildered, angry, defensive, or defeated.
“So the question is, what does it look like to live as a Christian in a society that does not like what Christians believe, what we say, and how we live? How are you going to live in this new world?”
Alistair takes us to the book of Daniel to find the answer. And, as we noted on Wednesday nights, Daniel and his friends were cast into a pagan culture, given pagan identities, and educated in pagan schools, but remained faithful by depending on God, and by trusting in His providence.
We can do nothing less today.
God Bless, Rick
Chatham Christian Church 