Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I am grateful for that statement from Andy Andrews. For more than the last five months, we’ve all been making lemonade out of the lemons that we’ve been given this year. As measures continue to contain and prevent the coronavirus, they can seem a bit long in our estimations and expectations. We can grow hopeless about the situation.

We’ve seen a lot of setbacks this year that are discouraging. The most obvious is the economy, which has been set back to the way it was before it began rebuilding steam the last three to four years. Parents, students and teachers see the challenge of online or virtual learning, but the results of that kind of education may not be seen for some time. My wife is a high school teacher. I see firsthand the challenges teachers are having during this time. It’s not just teaching the curriculum for the students, but students learning social behavior.

So, living through this year, we have three options. One option for believers in Jesus Christ is to give up, to retreat from the culture. The sobering question asked is why should you try to change anything? What difference can you make? A second option is to give in, to compromise, to go along to get along. As our country continues its moral trajectory with regard to ethics, abortion, and a host of other issues, it’s difficult to live according to biblical truth. So this option says to stay quiet, go along to get along. Again, the question is asked, what difference can you make?

Both of those options are not what Jesus and 2,000 years of history from followers of Jesus are known for. There really is one option, the third approach is to go on, to continue to be faithful, to persevere. It is to use your Godly influence however you can, wherever you can. It is to believe God is using your witness of living for Jesus in ways you will not be able to measure on this side of heaven. It is to believe that you can make an eternal difference if you will choose the power of perseverance.

The great need of our day is for courageous Christianity. It is for believers to live as Jesus lived and taught. The book of Romans, especially Chapter 8, reveals to us that God is in control and is the kind of God that can turn even bad things and somehow make them come out for good. It is to refuse the enemy’s temptation to give up or give in.

So, where is the enemy tempting you today? Where are you discouraged today? Are you tempted to give up or to give in? God is powerful, God is victorious, and God’s got this. With God’s help, let’s go on.

REV. JOHN MOXLEY can be reached at Jmoxley1@juno.com.