There is always a new challenge when walking with God with relentless, never-ending obstacles to overcome. These struggles will strengthen and purify you just as gold is purified in the fire. The key to success on the journey is to decide to choose God. One of the major challenges on your journey will be dealing with family and friends—a barrage of views based not on the word of God but their personal beliefs.
There are a few struggles and vices that you can eliminate quickly from your life, with the more difficult challenges rearing their heads one by one, attempting to knock you off the rails each time you think you are safe. Some of the challenges you will face:
- friends and family pushing and pulling in their directions
- giving up television
- gossip
- humbling yourself
- asking for forgiveness
- accepting your faults
- pornography
- masturbation
- the desire for wealth
- career
- putting God last in your day
- remembering to maintain your thoughts on God
Family and Friends Challenges
The people who have decided to walk with God have found that most people around them have not necessarily chosen to walk in the same direction. Even those who claim to serve God, their actions do not exemplify the instructions of God, and here the conflict of interest arises.
Studying the Word of God and then applying it to your life is “apparently” a novelty that will set you apart from the world around you. It is truly a sword that divides you from those around you (Matthew 10:34-36), a polarising lifestyle that those who wish to serve themselves will struggle to appreciate. Isolation will be hard at first but soon become second nature with God as your comfort.
At the start of your journey, you would expect a Christian society, Christian individuals, religious folks, and your friends and family would be excited to hear about your new direction. That would be furthest from the truth—serving religion, the world, and God are not the same.
Serve God, not the World
Going against friends and family is one of the hardest things to do, but you will find that being unequally yoked will exert excessive pressure and eventually take its toll on your walk. Compromising will only pull you back into the world, and the many obstacles of those who stand against God will be a needle in your side, hindering your progress, your testimony and ultimately sinking your ship.
Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them
Romans 16:17 (KJV)
Study the Word of God for yourself and follow Jesus and his testimony to worship God. Do not follow your family and friends, especially if they listen to the whisper of compromise.
51. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
Luke 12:51-53 (KJV)
52. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.
53. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
