Devoted — Glenn Meldrum

Turn with me to Acts 2. In the 41st verse, it says,.

Those who accepted His message were baptized and about 3 ,000 were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

And in the final verse of that chapter, it says, and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I want to look at the idea of devotion this evening. One thing we need to understand is that the early church devoted themselves for a reason.

The events that we just saw in that video, they saw in real life. They saw the real events. Now some of the apostles fled. It was the women who may have saw so much of that took place there. But they knew those events.

They were not mythical events. They weren't make-believe events. Those were real events that they saw. Real events that they knew of. They knew that He died on a cross. They knew that. Without any shadow of a doubt, they knew that He had died.

And the reality is that everybody who was crucified, there was never anybody who ever got off the cross alive. And so there was no maybe of Him being dead. He was absolutely dead. He was thoroughly, completely dead.

There was no maybes of it. They knew those events. And they knew the reality of His resurrection. It wasn't a maybe. It was an absolute. They knew it. They knew He was dead. And they knew three days later, He rose again from the dead.

It was proved. It was demonstrated. And even so much so, He revealed Himself to the apostles and some disciples. And we're not even told all the accounts that was given of Him revealing Himself. But then we know at the very end when He ascended to heaven that over 500 people saw Him ascend to the Father.

They knew the reality of it. And we have to understand something. Is they devoted themselves because they were so thoroughly convinced of who Jesus was. So thoroughly convinced of the events that took place.

So thoroughly convinced of His death, of His resurrection and of His ascension to the right hand of the Father. And so I want to look at the idea of devotion because we have to really ask ourselves, are we devoted?

We may think ourselves devoted by American standards, but are we devoted by biblical standards? Are we devoted according to what the Word of God says, to what He's calling us, to what the book of Acts says?

We say we want to see the book of Acts. We say we want to see the signs and wonders. We say we want to see the power and the people saved. We say we want to see the 3 ,000 that was saved. Like the first verse I read there.

3 ,000 were added to the church that day. And then the Lord added daily to their numbers such as should be saved. We want to see the miracles. But do we want to live the life that it took to produce that?

We want the book of Acts, but do we want the lives that produce the book of Acts? And that becomes the real crux of the matter, is do we want the lives that will produce it? Because until we're willing to live the apostolic lives, we'll not see the apostolic power.

The apostolic power will be withheld from us until the apostolic lifestyles are following us. And that's such an important thing. Today in our American culture, in our Christianized American culture that we have, that we end up thinking that we can give a half-hearted devotion, or we think devotion a little thing that we go to a Bible bookstore, and we get this little devotion, we read it for five minutes, and we've done our duty for the day.

That we've taken care of our Christian duty, we pray a little prayer on the way to school or the way to work or something, and we've done our devotion and it's over. But we have to understand, devotion from a biblical standpoint is totally different.

The idea of devotion is not a little book you go buy. It is a lifestyle. It is that you give yourself completely, absolutely, unequivocally, everything that you own, everything you desire, everything of your life, every hurt, every pain, every want, every ambition, that you yield it entirely, absolutely, completely, without reservation, that you devote yourself completely to it.

What did they devote themselves to? They said they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. What was the apostles' teaching? Putting it very simple, the apostles' teaching was Christ's teaching. What the apostles taught is what they were taught from the Messiah, from the Savior.

And so they devoted themselves to it. They didn't go to the Gospels and say, is this convenient? Will I live it out? Is it gonna prosper me? Is it gonna bless me? Is it gonna be comfortable? Do I like what it says?

They came to it and says, this is what Jesus said. What He said was true. Who He was was absolute fact. There was no maybes. We saw it with our own eyes. We saw Him raised again from the dead. We saw Him ascend to the Father.

We know it to be true. We will abandon ourselves to His Word. The giving of themselves over to it. Then it says they devoted themselves to fellowship. And the idea of fellowship, I'm not gonna dwell on each of these things.

They're very interesting if you take the time to really understand it. The fellowship wasn't the idea that they came to church once or twice a week. It was the idea that they gave themselves over to each other, to the building up of each other, to the encouraging of each other.

They met with each other on a constant basis. Going from house to house and so on. Encouraging, helping each other. Because in a persecuted situation, they needed the encouragement. But you know what?

In America, we think because we're not a persecuted people, we don't need the fellowship like that. But in a land of such prosperity, we need it as much as they do. Because without it, we will become a worldly self-centered, self-absorbed people.

And because we don't understand the importance of that issue, we live independent lives apart from that place of abandonment to Christ. And then they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. And I believe what the idea of the breaking of bread is that they devoted themselves to the cross.

Because the breaking of bread speaks of communion. And it wasn't that they made some religious function that they had to do it X amount of times a month or whatever. They devoted themselves to what the communion was all about.

What the breaking of bread was all about. And what it was about. About a Savior that came to this world and was born in a manger and walked this planet. When His ministry began, He made the blind see the lame walk and preached the good news.

And He was crucified for us and rose again from the dead and ascended to the Father. They focused upon the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. It was the focal point. It wasn't prosperity. It wasn't ease.

It wasn't comfort. It wasn't blessings. It wasn't all their desires and their ambitions. Because all of our desires and ambitions will pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away. All the things that we want and desire and pursue will all be done away with and will not matter in the scheme of eternity.

What will matter is what we have done for Him. And they focused upon the cross. We have become actually a people focused upon ourselves. Focused upon our own desires, our own hurts, our own pains, our own struggles.

They became a people devoted to the cross and all that it meant. Then they devoted themselves to prayer. You know what it means that they devoted themselves to prayer? It means they gave themselves over to it.

It doesn't mean that it was a little thing that they put in a little portion of their life. It means that it's what defined their life. That it defined their Christianity. It defined everything. When they got together in fellowship, you know what the fellowship was?

It wasn't talking about football. Now I'm not going to say it's wrong to sit down and talk a little bit about it. But you know the main thing that they talked about was Jesus and what He did and what was taking place in their lives and in the miracles that were taking place and loss that was being saved.

And you know what was the center of it all? Was this place of prayer. Because they didn't want to just talk about Jesus. They wanted to commune with Jesus. They wanted Him in the midst of them. Not just discussing theology and the Bible, which is wonderful and good, but they wanted to be in communion with Him.

They wanted Him in their midst. And they devoted themselves to that. Now what I want to do is I want to look at devotion from the standpoint of Christ. The reason why I want to look at Jesus and His idea of devotion because the early church got their idea of devotion from Jesus.

So if we want to understand how the early church understood devotion, we need to understand what Jesus had to say about devotion. And really Jesus spoke so much on devotion it's outrageous if we just would understand what He was really saying.

And He doesn't say that word. He implies the whole concept of devotion again and again and again. But we're going to look at one section of Scripture. And if you would turn with me to Luke chapter 9, the 57th verse.

What's taking place is Jesus had His face set to go to Jerusalem. And because His face was set to go to Jerusalem as He was passing through Samaria, the Samaritans and the Jews had great prejudice and animosity against each other.

Because He had His face set to go to Jerusalem, the Samaritans rejected Him. Wouldn't even give Him a place to stay. So He had to pass through the Samaritan villages to go to a Jewish village to spend the night there.

And so Jesus is walking with His apostles and disciples and with many other people. I don't believe that in this setting. I believe many times as Jesus went from village to village, it wasn't just a couple of people.

I believe there were throngs following Him. People that were just thrill seekers, but also those who were want-to-be disciples and some that were disciples and the apostles and so on. There was a whole company of this.

So the setting that is presented to us here is this idea. Jesus is walking along. His apostles are there, some disciples there, some want-to-be disciples are there, and they're walking along. And Jesus, what I believe He did all the time, He made the most of every opportunity.

And He's walking along, He's teaching. And I just believe as He's going to Jerusalem, He's teaching. And this is the situation we're going to look at here. Jesus is going to speak to three men. And these three men are going to respond to Jesus.

And Jesus is going to respond to them with a parable, a little parable, a little proverb in essence. And each of these little parables, we could refer to them as open-ended parables. And what I mean by that is they are parables that the answer is never given to.

So we don't know the response. We don't know what these three men did in response to what Jesus had to say. And so Jesus does that in many of His parables, has them open-ended. So you don't know what the answer is.

You want to know why He did that? So that we could put our own lives into it. So that we could give our personal responses. So that's what we have to do with each of these men as we look at this thing.

What would we do if Jesus said this to us? Now let's read the section of scripture in the 57th verse. It says, as they were walking along the road, a man said to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus replied, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. He said to another man, follow me. But the man replied, Lord, first let me go and bury my father.

Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. So another said, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family. Jesus replied, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

Now I'm going to touch on something and it's going to come out especially in the second and third parables. I'm going to be touching on some new scholarly work that has been taking place. I think that's very interesting.

And what it is, is one of the scholars lived for 25 years in the Middle East in villages, among the village people, among the peasants. And then he was raised in the Middle East as well. So he has 50 years or whatever it would be living in the Middle East before he even wrote this.

And his scholarly work is trying to go back into the lives of peasants and what it was because Jesus spoke to peasants. He was speaking to the common poor people of the day. And so there was situations that were being dealt with that many times we don't understand, especially from a Western mindset.

And so I think there's some interesting thought that comes out as we begin to look at what Jesus has to say here. And so let's begin with the first parable. As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, I will follow you wherever you go.

This man volunteers to follow Jesus. And that's a good resolution, isn't it? It's a wonderful resolution to go and say, yeah, I'll follow Jesus. That's a good thing. We want people to say that. But you know, there's this problem with Jesus.

And what it is, is he knows your heart. You know, you can say something to him and he knows the reality of it. You'll see this many times when Jesus deals with people that he is not dealing with the issue that they're mentioning he deals with their heart.

The rich young ruler is an example of it. This rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he tells Jesus that he kept the commandments, all the commandments. That was an absolute lie. Jesus could have taken a few minutes and showed him he broke every one of the 10 commandments, but he didn't do that.

He knew the real idol of that man's heart. And he went after the idol of his heart and it was his wealth. And so when he confronted the man with his wealth, he walked away and he wouldn't follow Jesus.

So that's what Jesus does. He goes after the heart issues. And so we can give these excuses why we're not doing this or why we're not doing that or whatever, but he wants to go after those little idols, those things that are really controlling our lives, those things that are dominating us.

And that's what he does with this man. And so this man says, I'll follow you wherever you go. Jesus replied that fox have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.

You see, Jesus was understanding something about this man that it was a selfish pursuit of him. He was going after Jesus for what Jesus had to give, not for who Jesus was. Now let's look at this picture a little bit more from a Jewish mindset of 2000 years ago, before the resurrection.

They may have believed that he was Messiah, but what would that have meant to their minds of that situation? They would have thought that Jesus being Messiah as being a son of David would come to the throne of Israel and he would become the power of Israel as the king and he'd amass this great army and overthrow Rome and the tyranny of Rome and Israel would become the praise of the world and Jerusalem, the city of God, where all the world would come to worship.

And so you know what that would mean is if Jesus became the king and you were one of his inside groupies, that you'd be some of the people in the high places of power. You wouldn't have to go through an election like we just went through.

You'd be appointed in essence. And so man, this guy was going to say, Jesus, I'll follow you wherever you go, man. Yeah, yeah, you're going to Jerusalem and you're going to be king. I mean, you're going to get rid of all these Romans and you know, I'd like to be right there.

I'd like to be one of your cabinet. You know, in essence, that's what he was saying. I'll follow you if you give me what I want. I'll follow you if life is easy, if you bless me, if you prosper me, if you give me the expectations of my heart.

But you know what Jesus was doing? He was attacking that very thing. He was laying siege to that very thing because he was saying, foxes have holes and birds have nests. He says, but I don't have anywhere to lay my head.

And what he was trying to say is, will you follow me if I have nothing to give you? Will you follow me as if you're going to be in need and poverty if you're not going to have the expectations of your heart?

If you're not going to have all these desires fulfilled within you, will you still follow me? Will you follow me if all the ambitions that you have designed in your life never come to pass, will you still follow me?

Will you still serve me though you have these desires and they don't come to pass? Will you still serve me? This one Arab commentator, what's interesting about Arab commentators is they don't approach the Word of God from a Western mindset that we have and sometimes really taints the Word.

And so he makes a statement in relation to this, this Arab commentator. He says, this man that Jesus is speaking to, he does not understand that to follow Jesus means Gethsemane goggeth in the tomb. He thought that to follow Jesus meant a throne.

He didn't understand that it wasn't a throne, that if you follow Jesus, you have to go to the garden with Him and you have to weep with Him over a perishing world. That if you follow Jesus, that you've got to go to the cross and you've got to die.

That if we want the resurrection, that we've got to first follow Him through the garden and to the cross. And that's not what the man wanted. He wanted a nice Christianity. He wanted a happy Christianity.

He wanted a Christianity that gave him everything he desired, everything he dreamed of. Not a Christianity where he got a living Savior that would take him right through the garden and take him to the cross.

And so he was willing to follow a popular leader. Would he follow a rejected one? Would he follow a rejected one? Because you know what would happen is if you followed a rejected leader, you know what that would mean?

That means you'd be a rejected follower as well. I mean, there's no other way around it. You would be rejected along with him. Now, we know Peter ran away from it because he didn't want to be rejected.

And he denied the Lord three times because he didn't want to be rejected. But we know after that, after the resurrection, after he found forgiveness, and eventually, years later, he laid his life down.

He did finally give up his life. He finally came to the point where he would be willing to do it, where he loved Jesus more than his own life, more than his own self-preservation, more than his own happiness and desires and ambitions.

But Jesus had to do a lot of work in the man to bring him to a point to be willing to give that all up. And so let me ask a question. Are you like that man? Are you like the man that you'll follow Jesus so long as it's good, so long as it's convenient, so long as you get what you want?

You know, young people, will you follow them just so long as everything is going fine and there's a guy in the youth group that you like and he pays a little attention to you? Will you still follow Jesus or is it that you're really following Jesus at all?

Is it contingent upon what you get or is it upon who Jesus is? You see, the early church devoted themselves to Christ because they knew who he was. They saw a crucified, resurrected Lord. They were so thoroughly convinced of it, they devoted themselves to it.

And you want to know one reason why I believe that the American church is not devoted to Christ? Because we don't believe he is who he really says he is. We question it. We'll go and we'll say amen to a point, but do I believe him to the point that I would give up my rights, my life, my ambitions, my desires, my wants, my possessions when I give it all up?

Do I really believe him to be that? Am I yet convinced of his resurrection and of his death? Am I convinced of it that I will devote myself, everything that I have, everything I desire, will I devote myself to him because I know he is who he said he is?

K .P. Yohannan was a man who started a ministry in India. He himself is Indian, never wore shoes until he was 17 years old. I'm not gonna go through his life. He gave a story though of some missionaries.

And these were five young pioneer missionaries. They were called to go to a northern state in India. I know I'll pronounce it wrong. I'm pronouncing it as a Westerner. It's Raghastan. And they had no money for the train fare, let alone for food or rent.

And everyone begged them to stay at home. But this was their answer. If we have no money to go by train, then we will walk the 1 ,500 miles to get there. If one of us becomes sick and dies on the way, we will bury him on the roadside and the rest of us will continue on.

If only one of us survives the journey and reaches Raghastan and places one gospel track on that hot desert sand of that state before he dies, we will have fulfilled our mission and we will have obeyed our Lord.

What a concept. What an alien concept in America. It's not about the aspect. I will follow Jesus if I have all the stuff I want. It's the idea I will follow him because he is who he says he is. He did what he said he will do and he is worth the abandonment of my life whether I get what I desire or not, whether I prosper or not, whether life is easy or not, whether all my dreams are fulfilled or not.

I will follow him because of who he is, not because of what I get. But you know, in our country, we have developed a whole doctrine of prosperity that centers upon the aspect that will follow Jesus for what we can get from him because we deserve to prosper rather than the aspect that he deserves my abandonment.

I don't deserve his prosperity. Now let's look at the second parable. Jesus said to another man, follow me. Now just think of this situation here. Jesus walking along and this young man comes up to him and says, I'll follow you, Jesus, wherever you go.

And Jesus responds to him. And soon as he's done responding to him, here's this other young man that maybe came up with him and he turns to him and says, you follow me. I think these events are taking place one right after another.

It's kind of this situation that probably takes place just in a couple of minutes time and probably some really intense stuff and I would imagine because, you know, Jesus had the Holy Spirit without limitation that the presence of God was there in such a tangible way that conviction was flowing through the whole place and everything else and rattling these guys' cage.

And so Jesus turns to this man and says, follow me. Now that sounds reasonable, doesn't it? So this man, Jesus pursues. The first one says, I'll follow you. The second one, Jesus pursues. The third one says, I'll follow you.

But, you know, the problem is we've got to understand follow from the standpoint of what Jesus is saying, not from our American society. What do we think of when we say, follow me? Well, follow me, okay, follow me to Starbucks.

Follow me so far, so long as it's convenient. And if it's not good, I'll turn around and go back home. I'll follow you so far. You know, it's always contingent. I mean, it's like today, the way marriages work.

For better, for worse, for rich or poor, as long as I think it's okay. Those are all lies anymore, you know? They shouldn't say that anymore. It's all lies. But, you know, they're coming, they're lying.

They know that they have no intention for better, for worse, because it's not in their hearts. It's for convenience. It's for happiness sake. And if we have that whole concept in relationship to each other, how do we think we're not gonna have that same concept with Christ?

And so this man is hearing this from Jesus, and Jesus is saying, follow me. But the man knew what follow me was. Let's look at a couple of illustrations of what follow me is. In the beginning of the Gospels, Jesus goes to a couple of men that are fishing, and he says to them, what?

Follow me. What does it say? It says they left everything and followed him. And then it gives another story of a couple of men that were with their father fishing. And Jesus goes to those men and says, follow me.

It says they left their father and their nets. So they left their family, and they left their livelihood, and they left it all and followed Jesus. You see, following what Jesus was saying when he said, follow me, you know what that would mean to them, to their minds to that day and age?

Jesus would be saying to them, stop everything you're doing, stop the way you're living, stop the way you're acting, stop to what you're pursuing, stop everything and start something brand new, what I'm telling you.

Christianity is radical to the bone. It's absolutely, totally, completely radical. And somehow we're forsaking that in America. We're making following Jesus contingent upon convenience. But that has no part of the kingdom of God.

Jesus said, follow. Now, you know what that means? That means I have to take everything I have, everything I own, everything I am, every desire I have, every hurt, every struggle, pain, everything in my life, and I have to take it to the foot of the cross, and I have to put it at the foot of the cross.

And I have to leave it there. And I have to be willing to let him keep everything and anything he wants. Whether it's my job, whether it's my money, whether it's my anything, everything. I have to lay it all at his feet, give it all up freely to him, and let him give back to me what he chooses to give back to me.

Another way we could think of it is that I have to take everything that I own, every loved one, every possession, everything, and put it in the palm of my hand, and hold it forever in my life while I'm on this planet, hold it in the palm of my hand, and let God reach into it and take anything out he chooses to take out, and put anything in that he chooses to put in.

And I must refuse never to grab hold of what he puts into it, and grab hold of it, and then make it my own, and say, I will not let it go. Because you know how many times that God has given us something, or maybe not even God gave us something, we grabbed hold of something we wanted, and we grabbed hold of it, and then it became an idol to us.

And if God tried to take it away, we'd cop attitudes and bitterness and anger at him, and say, why'd you do this, why'd you take this from me? Because we clung to the thing, we turned it into an idol.

And so we have to take everything we have, everything at all, absolutely everything, and put it before him, and let him take anything out that he desires, and put anything in that he wants. To follow him means I must make myself totally, completely vulnerable to him.

Totally vulnerable. But you wanna know what? The only way I'll truly make myself vulnerable to him is that I believe that he is who he said he is. That he did what he said he did, and that he is faithful to do what he promised he'll do.

Now, the response of this young man is interesting. He says, first let me go and bury my father. Now you know what's so interesting? You can go to commentary after commentary after commentary, and you'll find them all wrong.

You wanna know why they're all wrong? Because they interpret that little phrase from a Western mindset. They do not interpret it from a Middle Eastern mindset. There's one man that wrote on this very thought.

He makes a statement, he says, the phrase to bury one's father is a Middle Eastern traditional idiom that refers specifically to the duty of a son to remain at home and care for his parents until they are laid to rest respectfully.

You know what that means? That means that a son, it is the duty, it is the responsibility, it is the cultural responsibility of a son to take care of his father till his father dies. This wasn't about a father that was ready to die.

You don't know whether this man would have lived a year or 50 years. You have no idea. This young man has no idea. But it was the culture. There were no concept of convalescent homes. You didn't take your parents and put them in a convalescent home.

You took care of your parents no matter what it cost you. You cared for them, you loved them, you nurtured them. Even if they were in senility and so on, you took care of them. That was the culture. You do not abandon your parents.

There was, in our culture, we revere youth and we reject seniors. But you go to other cultures, it's the total opposite. I mean, they think when you're old that you have come to the place where you have knowledge, you have wisdom, and they revere those who are older because of the wisdom and the experience that they have.

And the whole idea in the Middle East would be that they would pass that wisdom down from one generation to the next generation. It was a thing of great honor to take the wisdom of your father and take it in your own life so that you could take it and pass it on to your children.

It was the idea within families that it was a noble thing. This is still going on in the Middle East. We have to understand what I'm saying here is still happening. You can go into Middle Eastern villages that haven't changed for 2 ,000 years because they think it a noble thing to stay the same.

They think it a noble thing for the son to do what the father did, to do what the grandfather did, to do what the great-grandfather did, and so on for generations. They think to veer from that occupation would be a disgrace to your father and to all your parents before you, that it was a noble thing to continue the family line, to continue the family tradition, the family business.

And so Jesus is going to respond to the man in a way that is so radical. We don't understand how radical this is. This man actually is putting off Jesus to a convenient time. He's going to Jesus, says, I'll follow you later.

I mean, I'd really like to. You know, I mean, I think all this excitement is wonderful and maybe I'll show up once in a while for some exciting time, but I don't know whether I really want to commit myself to you.

Besides, I've got some cultural pressures upon me, some cultural things that are moving me in a particular direction. And, you know, I don't want to go against the flow of the culture. Now, there's another dimension of this that I want to touch on that I think is so important.

You see, in the Middle East, it's a patriarchal society. You know what that means? That means that the father rules the family. How does that work in the Middle East? You have the father that rules the family.

He rules the children, but he rules the children that are young and the children that are old. He rules the children that have now their own wives and have their own children. He rules the grandchildren.

He rules all under him as long as he's alive. He is the voice, the ultimate authority of that entire clan. And when he dies, the eldest of his sons would take that position and then it would pass on to him.

It was a noble thing to be under that. And so your father had absolute rule over you. You didn't do anything without permission of your father. It was an absolute. It was a patriarchal society. That is what everything was.

You didn't do anything apart from the blessing of your father. Look at that with the patriarchs in the scripture. You know, the importance of the blessing of the father. The child never wanted the cursing of a father.

So they would walk in their place of obedience to that they might have the blessing because they believe so importantly of that blessing upon their life. Because if they had a curse, it would literally curse their life.

If they had a blessing, it would bless their life. The problem is that he had a greater commitment to his father and to his culture than the Christ. Now, you know what's so radical about this? Jesus is standing against the entire culture.

And he is saying, I will have greater authority over your life than your culture. I'll have greater authority over your life than your parents, than your spouse, than anybody in this world. And you know how radical that would be?

I can just imagine when Jesus responded to that, what happened is all the apostles and disciples, their mouths gaped open. They all looked at him in absolute astonishment because of that culture. It was right to obey your father.

And Jesus is saying, no, I am the ultimate authority. I am the supreme source of authority. You will obey me. We have to see how this works in our day and age because our culture is pushing upon us to be a particular people, to dress a particular way, to act a particular way, to think a particular way, trying to force us in particular ideas and to be a particular type of people, to believe particular things.

We have a culture screaming at us to accept ungodliness and make it a normal thing. And we are called of God, no matter if it means the giving up of our lives for it, to stand for what he says is true, not for what a culture says is true.

But how often is it that as a church, we are compromising because it's difficult at times to stand against the culture. Stand against the culture of a workplace, of the school. Young people, you got pressures at school.

Are you standing against the culture of a school that is trying to push you away from Christ, trying to drive you away from Christ? Are you standing in opposition, in defiance to a world that's trying to take you from Christ?