The Courage to Stand

I think the greatest threat to the church in our day is based in our profound desire to be acceptable to the secular culture. We want to be accepted. Nobody wants to be considered a fool. Nobody wants to be deemed stupid. Beloved, I’ve spent my whole life in the academic world, and I know that the greatest moral weakness of Christian professors is their intimidation by the world for fear that they will be thought of being less than academically acceptable if they hold such positions as the inspiration of the Bible or the exclusiveness of Christ—these ideas that the world abhors.

And so, we wimp out. We lose our courage because we don’t want to be thought of as being weak. But who is weak and we are not weak? Paul said, “I’m with you in your weakness.” And the strength of God is greater than weakness.

Right now as I speak, one of the closest friends I’ve had in my entire life is on his deathbed. In our hopes, he was scheduled to be here this week, but it was not to be in the plan of God. And he is dying in faith, and he is dying in triumph, and he is dying in joy. But I remember just a little over a year ago when Jim Boice and I were together, alone, and he was looking at the landscape of the evangelical world. And he looked at me, and he shook his head, and he said, “R.C., we’re surrounded by wimps.” I don’t know how many times that’s gone through my mind. And I said, “Oh God, don’t let me be a wimp. Don’t let me be a coward who runs when the world is hostile.”