Recently I was invited to a religious forum online as a contributor. While it started out fine and people were respectful to each other it went to a place they all seem to go. Even for a little while. It seems no matter what conversations start up on conspiracy theories or other wild ideas that permeate the religious people. These ideas are anything from flat earth, man made weather and nature phenomenon, all the way up to who Jesus really was. This is nothing new. If you look back in history these ideas have been around for many years. The sad thing is people start to intertwine them with their belief in God. This is not something we should do. What happens is we end up with worldly concerns replacing our worship of our creator.

Paul wrote to an up in coming minister in Christ, Timothy about conduct concerning such things:

Join me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 A soldier refrains from entangling himself in civilian affairs, in order to please the one who enlisted him. 

What he was describing is in our conduct we should refrain from the cares of the world. Soldiers serve the government they are in. Our Government that we serve is Gods.

 One thing understood is we should never be surprised by what we see in this world but in many respects, we should never be entangled by them.

The parable of the Sower found in the Gospels shows us that we can be easily swept away from the faith if we embrace the concerns of the world around us. When the sower places the seeds of the word among thorns they quickly grow up to choke out the word. Some ideas start out simply as an idea but can easily become an obsession that takes us to places we do not want to go. People have had their lives completely ruined based on an idea that they became obsessed with. Only in the end did they find out it was trivial or wrong. Sadly, this also causes division among believers, which plays into the hands of our adversary. As brethren in Christ, we are supposed to be like the soldier and go about our essential duties without being involved with ideas and things that do not matter. We should be at peace knowing there is nothing we can do or anyone to change any of the things, no matter what they are. All things are in God’s hands and that includes us. We should rest on the peace that that should give us by knowing it.

In Christ always,  

Steve Koenig

Lakeshore Fellowship