If you are a Believer in Jesus Christ, there WILL come times that you will have to make a decision between doing what GOD SAYS or backing off and NOT doing what God says.

---Maybe your friends want you to go somewhere with them and you know in your heart that if you go there, it will not honor God.

---Maybe your co-workers and boss have meetings and like to drink and because they do, you feel compelled to drink even though you know it is not honoring to God.

---Perhaps you are a Sunday School teacher and God lays a message on your heart but you are afraid the people in your class won't receive it. 

The list could go on and on. Whatever the choice is, you WILL be faced with choices in this life! Are you going to choose to follow after what God says or are you going to live a lukewarm Christian life? Joshua said, "As for me and my house WE WILL SERVE THE LORD!"

There is nothing I love seeing more than someone who is sold out for the Lord Jesus Christ! And any time you see someone who IS sold out, that person is going to suffer persecution. What is odd is, just as expected, persecution will come from unbelievers but the really tough persecution will come from BELIEVERS!

Even my best friend, the one I trusted completely, the one who shared my food, has turned against me. Psalm 41:9

For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company. Psalm 55:12-14

It hurts when you are betrayed by your friends and brothers! It is sharp and it is painful. Where I grew up, pastors last about four years in churches. When they first move to a new town, they are new and people are excited to have them in their church. Then after a year or two, people in the church get familiar with them and realize that the pastor and his family are human just like them and the newness starts to wear off. Then, after three or four years the pastor preaches something that one of the deacons in the church doesn't like or misunderstands and that deacon throws a fit and convinces the other deacons to vote that pastor out! They forget that pastor is human, usually with a wife and children and they have lives, feelings and emotions like everyone else but it doesn't matter. I've seen this cycle go round and round all my life. You've heard the phrase, "Familiarity breeds contempt." That is why the scriptures say, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home." (Mark 6:4).

But no matter what, we need to sell out to Jesus and do what God requires of us no matter what persecution we face. Determine in your heart that you will stand strong for the Lord and that you will speak what he commands you to speak and do what he says to do.

I would much rather stand before God my Father and hear Him say, "Well done my faithful servant, you followed My will and did what I told you to do!" instead pleasing any man!