The Defiant Life预览

Defiance: "a refusal to obey something or someone."—Merriam-Webster Dictionary

It’s easy to go with the flow, but it takes a great deal of boldness and conviction to swim upstream and be defiant. The Bible teaches us not to conform to this world’s standards. Non-conformity means living a defiant life that refuses to obey the world’s standards that contradict the word of God. Jesus was the epitome of someone who led a defiant life. From the moment Jesus entered this world, his birth defied the laws of nature. He went on to mingle with tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and so-called sinners. These were the very people that the society in his day despised, but he refused to discriminate against them. He went on to heal people and had the audacity to do it on the wrong days. The prevailing religious rulers of the day could tolerate Jesus healing people on any day but the Sabbath day, which was a day of rest. But Jesus moved with compassion, defied their expectations, and went ahead to heal people regardless of the day. He went on to walk on water as though it was dry ground, once again defying the laws of nature.

One day while at the temple, he saw how people had turned the place of worship into a marketplace and a den of thieves. So, he made a whip, overturned tables, and drove people out. He could have set up a little healing booth and started charging people money at the temple. Instead, he went against the status quo, even if it meant he angered some of the people and went down in the popularity poll.

Ultimately Jesus went on to defy sin, even though he was fully human. He was tempted in every way yet without sin.

We are living in exciting yet precarious times. It’s an age where moral relativism reigns supreme, and moral absolutes are frowned upon. As such, there has never been a time that more desperately warranted a defiant Christian generation that can stand up for truth and speak the truth in love.

Throughout scripture, we see men and women who had strong convictions that caused them to become defiant. They defied their age, experience, station in life, existing protocols, opposition, logic, and culture. These are some of the same things that we will have to defy at some point in our lives in order to fulfil our God-given purpose and uphold our Christian values.