Do you look around and see wicked people doing fine … even prospering? Have you ever thought, “Why bother doing what is right?!” or “I’ve been good for nothing!” Those were the Psalmist’s thoughts. Psalm 73 has a powerful message for every believer who has ever struggled with those kinds of thoughts and feelings about wicked people.
And speaking of wicked people, we’ll read about a grandmother so evil she had her own grandchildren murdered. We’ll, also, consider the influence wives and mothers can have on their children, grandchildren, and the world around them … for good or for evil.
And read about the foolishness of judging when you only hear one side of the story and the danger we run of taking sides without knowing the facts.
A couple of years ago, a missionary visited our church to talk about his organization’s work in an African nation where Christians are routinely murdered, women and girls are raped and disfigured, and where the missionaries themselves are marked for death. Doing right by sharing the gospel in a place like that is risky, to put it mildly.
But the Christian life lived well is a life of risky faith. Sometimes that involves a call to a foreign mission field or some other dangerous ministry, but it also takes risky faith to turn the other cheek or forgive with no guarantee you won’t be hurt again. It takes risky faith to obey God when it makes little sense to your natural way of thinking or to stand up for the truth in a world of compromise. So, how can you trust God more as you seek to do right in a world where doing right is risky?
