How We Live Has Consequences

09/09/24 – 09/21/24

Sojourners

By Michael Youssef, Ph D.  09/17/24

As a sojourner in the City of Man, make sure that your allegiance to the City of God is undivided and uncompromised. Make sure that as you live in the City of Man, you maintain your wholehearted fidelity to the City of God. In these days, when many who profess to be Christians are selling out and compromising with the culture, we must stand with Joshua, who said, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).

God has strategically placed you in your neighborhood, your workplace, or your campus so that you can be an ambassador for the City of God, even though you now live in the City of Man. God does not call us to run from the City of Man or to hide in a bunker to wait out the apocalypse. God has called us to stand in the thick of the fray, to plant our feet at the bloody crossroads of history, and to proclaim the Good News to a dying world.

God calls us to invite others—before it’s too late!—to come to the City of God. We cannot invite others to follow Jesus if we are living as they do. If our lives reflect anxiety and fear instead of confidence and faith, what “good news” do we offer the world?

Prayer: Father, give me an undivided heart that longs for Your presence. As I take joy in You, may others see Your goodness and find salvation. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:11-12).