35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
Look at this list of external forces that many would say are the forces that could push someone away from faith in Jesus. But the amazing thing is that for most Jesus-followers, these forces actually cause them to draw closer to the Lord. It doesn’t matter if the trouble comes from those who want to put pressure on you to live their way or not, believers choose the hard road. The laws might change in an attempt to narrow our choices, “stop preaching Jesus or go to jail”, and we can choose to preach and go to jail. The pressures might come in the direct form of persecution, and we will join the millions around the world who are being beaten and tortured for their faith. Or perhaps our economic resources will be taken away so that we can neither eat nor find shelter, but we can still follow Jesus. Or the enemies of the Cross might take up arms and explosives and attack us in an attempt to get us to stop living and proclaiming Jesus, but we don’t have to yield to their pressures. You see, no external force can cause us to abandon Jesus. We might choose to abandon and we might even use the excuse of some external force, but the choice is clearly ours to make. We can choose imprisonment rather than silence. We can choose scarcity rather than abundance if abundance means turning from the faith. Our choice is our choice. I want to choose to follow no matter what the external circumstances are. I can choose to follow regardless of the political climate and the whims of political correctness. I make the commitment to follow no matter what external force rages against me. How about you? Will you follow no matter what happens?
The Arnold Journey 