762 Your Own Conviction Before God - Romans 14:22

Can you explain your convictions to someone who might not agree with you? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. Today is the last day of the first week of our Marketplace Mission Trip. And we always talk through the five daily activities in the first week of the mission trip.

The fifth of those daily activities is Speaking for Yourself. Today, I chose a verse that feeds into this. And that verse is Romans 14:22, "The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves." And that's from the New American Standard Bible.

I expect the different translations might have that stated slightly differently. But the challenge here is to be able to understand what you believe and know what you believe. Do this as your own conviction. If you convict yourself or condemn yourself, because you do something opposite of what your own convictions are, then you won't be very happy. You're living this dual split life. 

This is at the end of a passage about not causing our brothers to stumble. And he's talking much about meat sacrifice to idols or drinking wine or doing anything that might cause your brother to stumble, it says in the verse before this. But the principle applies. 

Do we know what we believe? That was Wednesday's activity. Are we willing to explain that to someone who might have different convictions than we have? And that's our fifth daily activity, which is Speak for Yourself. It's about using "I" and "me" statements to explain your actions and your beliefs. People don't care what we believe unless we live according to that belief.

But if we live differently and people see that difference and we can explain it reasonably. We make Jesus visible in the world. And that's our opportunity here. That's the whole point behind speaking for yourself on the Marketplace Mission Trip. When we're asked, we want to be able to explain why we're doing what we do.

And I often say that I do it because when I started following Jesus, that changed my life. And now I try and do what I believe Jesus would want me to. And often that's all the explanation I get to give to someone on the first time or the first conversation. People need to process what they hear. 

Our whole five daily activity plan is we pray first. We appreciate others second. We know what we believe. We practice this answer, third. We serve others, which is what we're doing all the time. And then our fifth daily activity. Is that when we're asked, we speak for ourselves. We don't have to go forcing conversations. We don't have to try and manipulate the dialogue in the  break room or anything like that.

What we need to do is be able to explain our convictions. " The faith which we have, have as our own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves." 

Today let's live intentionally according to our faith. And when someone asks us, let's give them a simple explanation about why we believe what we believe and why we live the way we do.

That's a compelling reason for them to consider our faith. But they get to choose and they get to take the actions. They're not being forced or proselytized in any way. We're simply telling them the reasons behind our motives. 

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for joining us in this effort of trying to take our faith with us to work and trying to integrate our faith into everything that we do. 

What we do because we follow Jesus matters forever. I say that often on this podcast. But even Jesus said that if we give a cup of cold water in his name, we shall not lose our reward. And so the things that we do because we follow Jesus matter forever.

Also consider if you would supporting our ministry. We're a donor supported ministry. The podcast we provided no charge, the online community and the marketplace mission trips that we do, we don't do them with any upfront cost. We ask people to consider making a donation so that other people can take part in these activities as well. Would you consider making a donation to Follower of One. Just go to https://followerofone.org and click the donate button in the upper right hand corner and make a contribution.

Thank you very much for being a marketplace minister and for integrating your faith into what you do every day. It matters and I'm grateful. Thanks.