To You Who Knows What Is Right To Do

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you absolutely knew what the right thing to do was, but every human bone in your body (whether it be because of fear, pride, anger, jealousy, etc) kept trying to keep you from doing it.

I would imagine that we as fallen, sinful people encounter that a lot in our lives. We’re faced with situations where we know what the right thing to do is (and in all those instances it’s the Bible that is defining what the right thing to do is) and yet our flesh keeps after us trying to turn us the other direction. It’s a battle we fight each and every day. None of us have a perfect record in this battle, but as we grow and mature in our Christian faith, we should be seeing a higher percentage of victory than defeat.

I think there are about three categories that are the hardest to do what we know to be right to do. They are:

1 – Loving Our Enemies

This is tough I don’t care who you are. Loving your enemies is a hard thing to do. And that’s why Jesus knew it would be such a mark of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. You can’t do it otherwise. You can try for a while, but you won’t succeed in the long run without a total dependence on the Holy Spirit. He’s the only one that can enable true love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace towards those who would hurt you, betray you, persecute you. Jesus said that His disciples would love their enemies because even lost people can love only their friends. It’s Christians, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that are able to love their enemies.

2 – Confronting Injustice

How many times do you look out at the world and see injustices. Whether they are happening at a macro level (poverty, aids, orphans, abuse) or at a personal level (betrayal, mistreatment, injustice), we as human beings have a strong sense of personal preservation that prevents us from standing up for injustice. We would rather save ourselves than put ourselves at risk. No matter what the injustice, we have a hard time convincing ourselves that no matter what the cost to us, we are going to confront the evils in the world when we see them. We are extremely weak in this area. Thankfully, Jesus was not. He confronted the greatest evil in the world, it’s called sin. And he did so at the risk of his very own deity and life. He took the beating he didn’t deserve. How many times in life do we try to save our own lives while others lose theirs. We should follow the example of Jesus more often

3 – Using Our Resources For God’s Purposes Rather Than Our Own

We know we have a hard time with this. God gives us so much, and yet, we continue to put more and more of our resources into ourselves rather than the purposes of God. We feel like if we risk too much, we’ll end up with nothing. How stupid and faithless we are. We can never give to a point where we are hurt ourselves. It is when we lose our focus on the preservation of our resource and begin to freely give them to others that we find the true meaning of our walk with Jesus. Jesus could have held onto every one of His resources, but He didn’t. He gave them away. And He gave them freely. Without measure, and without partiality, and without restraint, He gave them. We should be more like Him and strive to become more giving people, especially when we have so much and others around the world have so little.

So there you have it. Three areas where we know what is right to do, but yet we don’t do it. If we would improve and pray God cause us to grow in these three areas, how much different our lives, our churches, our companies, our world would be.