July 2019 Articles

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Spiritual Corner: A Piece of Advice

Spiritual Corner: A Piece of Advice “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love”. –1st Corinthians 16:13-14
I shared the above scripture at my school’s Senior Chapel a few weeks ago. After sharing advice about college, I said that my biggest piece of advice to the soon-to-be graduates was to heed the above scripture. I still think this scripture is worth being followed and I hope and pray that all of the UCA graduates do adhere to it. However, what I find interesting is that, a scripture that I used to give advice to some of my students, is also one that I, as an adult, still need to adhere to. I’m a little embarrassed at how often the advice I give others is the exact advice I need as well. Maybe you’re the same way. Maybe you’re pretty good at giving advice, but also realize that you need to take your own advice sometimes. I’m definitely guilty! I want to look at this scripture and see how we can still apply it to our adult, long past high school, selves.

Be on your guard. As kids, while we may face challenges and temptations, we still have our parents and teachers and other authority figures in our lives that can help us stay on our guard or protect us from negative choices. As adults, we’re it. While we have our spouse and friends, ultimately we are fully responsible for our choices and our actions. Unfortunately, just like kids, we are still faced with temptations and challenges, but we are past the learning curve. By this time, we know better and should be doing better. We must stay on our guard because the devil is not just after our kids. He wants to take us captive, too and hinder or decrease the work we are doing for the Lord’s Kingdom. We must be on our guard always and one way to do that is to stay in God’s word and to stay in constant communication with Him and other believers.
Stand firm in the faith. Like I mentioned before, we are going to face challenges in this world. We are going to be hit with heartbreak and heartache and there are going to be many things happen in our lives that we just don’t understand. At times like this, the easiest thing to do would be to blame God or turn our backs on Him. However, we must stand firm in the faith. We cannot let our sorrow or confusion cause us to question God or our faith. It is during these difficult times that we must stand even firmer in our faith. If we wish our kids and students to stand firm in their faith during trying times, they must see us doing the same. We must lead by example and show others that the firmness of our faith is truly what gets us through in this life.
Be courageous. This one is hard for me. We don’t think about it, but sometimes it’s harder for an adult to be courageous than it is for a kid. Or sometimes kids are just better at it, or just braver than adults. I’ll be the first to admit that I am so often NOT courageous. We must be courageous with our faith. We must not be afraid to share our faith, pray in public, act out our faith, talk about our faith. We must be courageous and share the hope that we have. We must build relationships with others so that we can expose them to our faith. We must be aware that we might get turned down. We must be okay with being persecuted for our faith. But no matter what, we must be courageous and always stand by God and our faith and allow our lives to be a testament to Him.
Be strong. This point is similar to the past three points in some ways. Life is going to knock us down (or try to). People are going to hurt us. The devil is going to try and get us to question God. We must be strong. We must realize that our own physical strength or personal strength is not enough to get us through the struggles that life holds. We must realize that our strength comes from the LORD and we must look to Him constantly to renew our strength. We must be strong in our own life struggles, but so often we must also be strong for the people in our lives. We might be the source of strength that God provides for someone else during their difficult time. We must be refreshed and strengthened by God daily through His word and fellowship with others and through prayer so that we can stand strong in this life and so that we can be a strength for others.Do everything in love. I think this one is my favorite. No matter where we’re at in this life, we must do everything in love. We must humble ourselves and not do anything out of selfish ambition. We must do everything in love. We must love God and love others. We must live our lives with the sole purpose of loving God and loving others. Our words must speak love, our actions must exude love, our thoughts must reflect love. Love is the most powerful thing in the world. As prevalent as hate is in our society, it is no match for true and pure love, for “there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1st John 4:18). How different would our lives look if we truly did everything in love? What if every single choice we made revolved around showing love for another somehow? The more I’m around young people in the education system, the more and more I am convinced that all these kids really want and need is love. They just want someone to show them some attention, to lend them support, to love them. In fact, isn’t that what everyone really wants? To feel loved? I’m thankful that I can feel that love from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We need to share that news with everyone though. We need to be on our guard, firm in the faith, courageous, strong and we need to show love to all of those around us. And through living out this scripture, we’ll be able to lead others to Christ and allow them to feel the love that only Jesus can give! --Dana Alexander