I Need to Stop Letting the World Define Things For Me

The world keeps coming up with (what it thinks are) new and clever ways to try and trip Christians up when it comes to our faith in Christ. Any position, from claims that have already been refuted (every few years someone brings out the books that were rejected as Biblical canon) to questions full of flaws (can God create a rock that He can’t lift?), to positions that glorify self. Lately, the Enemy has been teaching humans to redefine words to try and invalidate them in an argument. Such words, like love, sacrifice, good, evil, and the like, are often used against us. The world redefines words, then uses them in arguments to either twist or to attempt to refute the Bible. It fails every time, but many believers to become shaken by these attempts. What defense do we have against such things? Who can help us when we’re attacked by the Enemy in such a way?

First and foremost, stop, pray and breath a bit: none of these attacks send God in to a panic. Corrie Ten Boom used to say “There are no emergencies in heaven, only plans.” Next, go back to the scriptures: Ecclesiastes says over and over that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and throughout scriptures, the arguments used today are presented and dealt with. Lastly, stop letting the world define things for you. Stand upon God and His definition of things. This is where Adam and Eve failed, and the oldest trick in the book often shakes us up. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was about obeying God and His word (literally only one command at that time), and letting God define good and evil for us. What happened, though? Adam and Eve took the fruit and defined for themselves what was good and what was not, and the only knowledge they gained was shame (that they were naked), and the knowledge that some day they would die. They were duped because they forsook God’s word for their own “freedom” and ended up enslaving themselves and every one of us that came after to sin and death. It’s time to stop letting the enemy define things for us. Dive in to the Word, live in it, live by it, think through it, and let God through the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus shape your heart and define things for you.

2 Corinthians 15:35-58

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.