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Here Comes Trouble!!!

  In your mind, what do you believe is the right thing to do for the Lord?  Let me ask this question in a different way:  As believers in Jesus, are we supposed to be passive in our witnessing to the Lord, or are we supposed to be aggressive in standing up for righteousness?  As I look out at my world I see many believers going about their own business while the rest of the world cries out for help.  I see the children living just doors down from us, abused and assaulted while we turn a blind eye assuming that it is none of our business, until it is too late.  I see government leaders making a mockery out of truth and justice while we go on along believing that as long as it doesn't directly affect me I don't have to be concerned with it.  I see many things happening in our world that we could make a difference in, if we would answer the call to go.  But, sadly, many of us remain in our pews unwilling to get involved because we are afraid of what getting involved might cost us.  Will it cost us our reputations, our jobs, our stuff?  There lived a man who also was afraid of what getting involved might cost, but in the end, he obeyed the Lord,
 
"So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt." Exodus 3:10

  Moses was asked to do a very big job.  God asked him to get involved in a very big way.  For over 400 years the Israelites lived in slavery, oppression, and death.  God heard their cries and sent Moses to lead them out of Egypt.  God sent Moses to stand up for righteousness.  God sent Moses to get into trouble! 

  A thousand things must have went through Moses' mind that are not written as to why he should not go.  But we know that he went, and we know that he went before the world's most powerful leader at the time with one statement: Let God's people go!  Moses was charged with standing up for righteousness, truth, justice.  Moses obediently stood up against oppression, injustice, wrong doing.  And, Moses was just one man, but, he had God on his side.  Moses faced the threat of death, and still he went.  Moses went, not because he didn't have a choice, but because he believed the Lord!

  If you were to read through the Bible, you would find that what Moses did is exactly what God calls us to do.  We are called to be obedient!  That means with everything!  We are not called to turn a blind eye and let it be someone else's problem.  We are not called to let someone more educated than us do it.  We are not called to let someone stronger than us do it.  We are called to be God's people, God's ambassadors.  We are called to stand up for truth, justice, righteousness.  But, how many of us do?

  Consider our Lord Jesus.  Wherever He went, other's sought to kill Him. Why?  It is because He brought truth, justice and righteousness to light.  He showed others, through love, the wrongs that were being done.  Wherever Jesus went, He brought trouble with Him.  His love for the least and the lost completely shook the religious elite.  Jesus did not come here to save us from getting into trouble, He came here to get into trouble with us.  I am not talking about sinful trouble, I am talking about the trouble that comes with standing up for the righteousness of God.  Jesus was the greatest troublemaker the world has ever know and He calls us to follow in His footsteps:

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn, " a man against his father, daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- your enemies will be the members of your own household." Matthew 10:34-36 

  Jesus is not saying that He came to cause chaos, Jesus was saying that He came to show us and teach us that we are to walk in the Lord first and all other things must follow second.   Jesus was telling us that we must stand upon the principles of God before anything else.  We are to stand up for the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the poor.  We are to stand up for God's people as He has stood up for us.

  It is extremely saddening for me to hear others in the church be so gung-ho while at church, then conform to the world as soon as they pass through the church doors on their way out.  Many believers talk about how things in society need to change, but don;t want to be involved in bringing the change.  Why is it that we want someone else to do it?  What are we afraid of?  The Bible clearly says that if God is for us, who can be against us?  When Moses faced pharaoh God stood with him and did not allow any harm to befall him.  Whenever Jesus faced others, God was always with Him.  And so it will be with us.  Whenever we make a stand for the Lord, He will always be with us!

  I am a Moses!  I always stand up for the Lord.  At times, it has cost me something, but God has always replaced it with something better.  Standing for God is not always easy and it is never intended to be.  We face a powerful enemy in this world, but Christ has already beaten him for us and he no longer holds power over us, unless we let him.  We want the world to change and be a better place, but until Jesus returns, He charges us with bringing that change.  What good does that change do us if we only talk about it in the comfort of our churches?  We are to take it to the streets!  We are to take God to the drug dealers, to the lawmakers, to the warriors, to the politicians, to the prostitutes, the child abusers, the murderers---we are to take Christ and His Word to all the world to LET HIS PEOPLE GO!  When you confessed Christ, you became one of the one's crying out in the wilderness. The question is, will you?

Harold Trent

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