The Gift

Remain firm in the word

Be Alert, Stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Paul gives four commands to the believers in Corinth. First he tells them to be alert. I remember when I first entered boot camp to be Marine. A few of us, flew out from Denver and arrived in San Diego where our boot camp was. When we arrived, we talked and laughed about how fun it would be to go into combat and what we would be and do. Then we see two military personnel come our way and they tell us to follow them outside to a bus and so we did. When got to the bus, we were yelled at and told to put our heads down and to not look anywhere unless we want to go to court. At this point, I’m thinking, what did I get myself into. When got to boot camp, we were given shots, we couldn’t sleep for 48hrs. When got to my sleeping quarters, we were told we got 15 mins to do everything. The next morning we went to get breakfast and we got 10 mins to eat. The saying was, eat now and taste later. Everything was done fast and as you were eating or doing your thing, you were taught to remain alert incase the enemy came by. We are being taught to be alert, stand firm, and be strong so that we can fight off the enemy. Their job was to break us down and build us up to be strong so that we could protect the USA.

The devil our enemy is using everything he can to draw us away from God and from each other. The devil is using what God has given us in gifts to destroy one another by dividing us. He is making us use our gifts like little children, bickering at one another and putting the blame on one another. If we are to stop our childish ways as Paul mentions in chapter 13, then we need to be alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men and be strong.

In other words, men are the supposed to be mature and courageous. They are not supposed to be scared, but mature in knowing how to use weapons or gifts in defeating the enemy. In this case, they are to be mature and strong in their faith so that they can defeat the devil. The devil as Peter says is always roaming around just waiting to devour the christian. He is using whatever opportunity he has to do it. He can use our ministries that we think is good against each other. He can use us to go against each other. He can use discouragement, he can use pride, he can use humility in the wrong way, he can use whatever you think is bad or good to go against each other, just as the believers in Corinth are doing to one another.

In today’s society, where anything goes and seems to be normalized as natural, the only way to defeat it, is to remain firm in the faith, mature and strong in the word. Being strong, being courageous, remaining firm, doesn’t your not afraid but it means you are mature enough to stand firm even in the toughest situation. The only way you can stand firm is to be alert and be mature and strong like men. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a man or that only men can be firm in the word, but it means that you need to pick up the Bible and read it, you need to come to church even when you don’t feel like it, you need to join in your ministries and other ministries as well even when you don’t want to and so on. Christians the person who is alert, firm in their faith, act like men and be strong is the person who uses their gifts to up lift the church even when people are thinking differently of the person.