Who Do You Fear Most?

I was talking to someone earlier today, about how confusing it is to those that are lost, when the Gospel is watered down by so many around us in today's day & age. And then I open my daily email, which I get from Revive Our Hearts. In it, is said:

"We want the crown without the cross, but there’s no crown without the cross. There’s no eternal life without death to self.

If we are faithful in proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and that He is the only way to salvation and if we hold to the moral standards of God’s Word, the world will oppose us.

The only way to avoid suffering for your faith is to compromise your faith, to fear man rather than God, to water down the message, to lower our standards. I can’t help but wonder if that’s why we haven’t seen more true persecution in this country because we have so diluted the gospel message and so watered down the standards of God’s holiness that we’re not an affront to anybody."
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How I love what that says! Makes me think of these verses below. May you go out each day, accepting that the crown comes with a cross.

" 18 If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." ~John 15:18-19
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"14 Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.
15 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:
16 To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?
17 For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ." ~2 Corinthians 2:14-18