By Daniel Garner
"Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong." - 1 Corinthians 16: 13
“...The ability to appreciate the moment, the environment and yourself in it, is the base for the bridge towards long term happiness of any human being. God gives us too many blessings to be anything less...with faith, there is no fear, no worry...God doesn't give handouts.. within any hardship I may face, a blessing can be found. I am strong. I am grateful. I am happy" - Specialist Jessica Martin, 142 Fires Brigade, U.S. Army.
After thinking about it for a full three and a half seconds and seeing absolutely no chance of negative repercussion at all, let’s start a blog about Nazi Germany.
Still there?
Awesome. So, unless you’re a bald white man who has an affinity for dressing as a ghost, spelling things with an abundance of “k’s” and hosting meetings in your trailer with subject matter that rhymes with “conspiracy,” you probably don’t have images of kittens and bunny rabbits flash before your eyes when you think of Nazi Germany.
And there’s a reason for that. Because, well, it’s Nazi Germany. The list of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi government has literally filled hundreds of books, documentaries, movies and everything else under the sun. The might with which they wielded their unbending machinations against even their own people still shocks us today.
Which is exactly why standing against them makes such an impression.
In the picture above you see nothing but a sea of Nazi salutes, all pointing in the same direction as they are celebrating the launch of a new ship in a German dockyard.
All of them except for one.
That one man, literally alone in an entire massive crowd of Nazi supporters, not only does not salute but comfortably wears his best smirk of incredulity.
That man is August Landmesser, and that picture was taken on 13 June 1936, just three years before Germany’s invasion of Poland.
Whenever we are around something that we know, deep down, is wrong and shouldn’t happen what do we do?
Do we just say “forget it” and join in on what’s going on, try and slink away or tell ourselves that it doesn’t matter? That it doesn’t affect us? World’s to big, after all what difference could we have made?
We are all born to make a difference.
There is not one person who is born that breathes their first breath who doesn’t have hope for being a world-changer. Our value in life is not dependent upon someone else telling us who we are or what we cannot do. It is not dependent upon someone else’s misguidedly skewed perception of us. It doesn’t matter what the media labels us.
It matters what God knows us to be.
When all of the world tells you what makes them feel better about themselves, when all the world tells you that you’re wrong because you’re not like them, and they tell you to move, don’t you budge.
Not one inch.
You say: “No. YOU MOVE.”
We’re confronted with hundreds of decisions a day. In a world that wouldn’t bat an eye over an unscrupulous act it’s ever more important that we do the right thing. That our actions and talent don’t outweigh our character.
That even if we’re surrounded on all sides by an unrelenting enemy who screams at us to be like them, we stand tall in our own beliefs.
That we rise in faith.
And that no matter what, we hope.
There is not one person who is born without hope.
Hope doesn't have to be taught, it's automatic. In the same way, every morning we wake up we inherently hope. But we've trained ourselves in such a way as to almost self-fulfill our own prophecy of being let down, and allow pessimism to govern our thoughts instead of hope. Maybe we've done this to protect ourselves from something in the past that really hurt us, or maybe we doubt in ourselves or others so much that we refuse to hope.
But hope always exists!
Hope always perseveres, and hope will always come naturally. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16: 13, to "Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be Strong."
We already have everything we need to win. We can be fully on guard because we know God has our backs. We can stand strong and bold in the faith because we know that it's based on a solid and firm foundation of God's promises to us. We can be courageous and strong because we've read Revelations and know how the story ends.
Allow yourself to hope for things. Catch yourself when you begin to discount why you shouldn't hope, and realize that even if the odds are against you hope still exists and will always prevail and win in the end.
The Takeaway: There's always hope. There's always strength. And there is always the ability to be fearless.
Because there is always God!