Off to war: did I choose the right side?

That's a question I think crosses the mind of everyone who believes, especially since I am relatively young in my faith and inexperienced in dealing with that "dark night of the soul." God has done so many amazing things, but as the Bible demonstrates in the history of both the Jewish people and the early church, people pressed by the world are quick to become fearful, and forget the good things God has done for them already; I am no exception.

Every morning I spend some time with God, early on while it's still quiet and peaceful and my mind is fresh. Reading the Word, studying it, and meditating on what God has done for me in prayer, these are all key to setting me up for a day where I look to Him. It's hard, though, to know when and how to carry the banner of God forward in life. I live in the proverbial Bible belt, yet there are so many around me who have no regard for God. There's a part of me left over from older times that wants to retreat into the American evangelical style of Christianity where I snipe at everyone else's faults while setting myself up as a moral paragon, but two things stop me: the work God has done to pull me out of that mindset, and my own memory of what I have done and still am capable of. But how do I carry out in my daily life what is seen by all others as pure foolishness? I was even amused to look at a comment on a Driscoll video I was watching and see it proclaim "You Christians are all FOOLS! Yes, YOU, m#$^@f$@&%s!"

I am, and I am a fool joyfully so.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.--1 Corinthians 1:20-25

The only way I can carry that banner is to live as that fool. And the only way I can know what that means is to continue my meditations on God, seeking from Him the way that He's set down for me, the way to love Him and obey Him. Why do I do it? Because I was a kid and got told so in Sunday school? I've been on my own for years, it would have been a small matter to jettison such history, and I've seen such things many times over the years, people who came up through church who now are indistinguishable from the world. It's because God changed my heart, He made Himself unmistakeable to me, and He still does. Because of that, I will gladly embrace what is to the world foolishness, because I'd rather have God's foolishness than the wisdom of a world that's dying more every day.

Do I reject the world? No. Even God does not reject the world--He sent His Son because He loved the world. I pray that God would make me a man that loves my fellow man deeply, but I also know that such love is a byproduct of loving Him--and so, I seek God's continued transformation of my soul.

I have had a good last few months. In spite of a month of pain, in spite of an unknown future, God has proven that He is so much better than all that. When the world and my own sin set about to attack, to press on me and break me away from Him, I hold on that much more firmly. I dig in tight and reach for the Word. There is joy in Christ, true joy and hope, and if my faith enrages another to the point that they'll call me vile names, then my only prayer is that I might be there to witness the point that God changes that man's heart, should that be His will. I pray it is.