“Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that is, how the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” 

“Fom whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.” (Ephesians 3: 2-6, 15-19)

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Paul encourages the Ephesians by reminding them that Christ loves everyone no matter who they are and that through His Spirit they’ve been blessed with faith and it’s through that faith that they can gain their strength.

Paul wants all of us to realize that it does take courage in order to stay faithful to Christ but we don’t need to be afraid of showing that courage because the Spirit of Christ is within all of us if we just call upon Him, He will help see us through any difficult time in our lives.

As we enter into a new year, there is probably far more uncertainty about the future than there has been for a very long time. The political atmosphere is charged with quite a bit of negativity towards people of faith and it can be immensely frightening when you are not sure whether or not if exercising your faith is going to be shut down.

Society wants for us to be afraid if not even ashamed to exercise our freedom to worship as well as coming out publicly spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. Not knowing whether or not we’ll be attacked for our beliefs can indeed make us hesitant to show our true feelings for Christ and this is exactly what others in the secular world want us to feel. They want to not only frighten us but they want to shame us at the same time trying to make us look like fools for believing in something they scoff at.. The saddest part is that far too many Christians will crumble under the pressure and tend to be ashamed to speak out publicly about Jesus.

Those who are afraid or feel ashamed to speak out joyfully about our Lord and Savior are going to have a rude awakening when the time comes for them to face Him face to face. For He will also be ashamed of those who didn’t have the courage to stand up in the face of adversity or evil on behalf of His holy name.

This new year, is going to be a severe test of our faith because there is a very good possibility that we will be facing challenges like we’ve never seen in our lifetimes before and those challenges are going to rock our faith to its core. But, as Paul reminds us, Christ has given us His Spirit and that Spirit that’s within our own hearts is there to give us the courage to rise up and fight back against those who want to destroy our faith. The Spirit is there for us in order to give us the strength to endure many of the tribulations that could be heading our way. Most of us in this country have never had to worry about being persecuted for our beliefs and that may have made us complacent in our faith and complacency can be dangerous to our faith and to our very souls.

We must rely on the Holy Spirit to not just prepare for a possible onslaught of hatred towards our faith but an attack on our own Christian humanity itself. We need to open our hearts to His Spirit and let Him guide us, if we do that we’ll never be ashamed of Jesus. It won’t be easy, but if we allow Christ to walk by our sides and not rely on our own devices we’ll be able to withstand whatever it might be that comes our way this year and many years to come.

Be courageous and don’t allow society to intimidate you or try to control your beliefs and who you are as a Christian! There is nothing shameful about believing in the one true God!