Who is weak in faith and who is strong? We are all weak in some areas and strong in others. The same for our faith: when it is strong in an area when we can survive contact with worldly people without falling into their patterns. When it is weak, we tend to avoid people, certain activities or places in order to protect our spiritual life. My brother, my sister, it is very important for us, Christians, to take a self-inventory to find out our own strengths an weaknesses. Because, if you do not know your weaknesses, Satan knows them and he will not hesitate to use them to make you stumble. So, always ask yourself if you can influence others for good rather than being influenced by them and if whatever you are doing you can do it without sinning. You see, in areas of strength, you should not fear being defiled by the world but instead you should go and serve the Lord because when sheltering your faith in such areas, you are not doing Christ’s work. But in areas of weaknesses, you need to be cautious, because if your faith is weak and you expose it, then you are lacking wisdom and being extremely foolish making yourself vulnerable! Besides, these verses tell us that we should not expect everyone, even in the best possible church, to agree on every matter. That is the reason why we need to learn to accept, listen and respect others, even those with immature faith that has not yet developed the muscles needed to stand against external pressures. The problem with many mature believers today is that, they would lack patience, not to say they have become insensitive Christians who can easily flaunt their own thoughts (not Christ’s thoughts) to new converts and end up offending them or undermining their newfound faith, knowingly or unknowingly. That’s why Paul warns the Church not to give responsibilities to new converts, lest they start swelling with pride (1 Timothy 3:6). In short, whether weak or strong in our faith, we should not sacrifice our liberty in Christ just to satisfy the selfish motives of those who are trying to force their opinions on us. The right attitude we should adopt for our faith to grow is to follow Christ as closely as we can, because in the end each of us is accountable to Christ alone, not to others and when we stand before Him to give a personal account of our life, we won’t be worried about what our Christian neighbour has done (2 Corinthians 5:10). Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.
[facebook]
[retweet]