We are living in a culture, today, that’s turned it’s back on God. 90,000 Christians were killed for their faith last year. There is an attack against Christians and against our faith. Last week, we said that your faith is the most important thing you possess. We all have faith, but we all need more faith.

Faith always moves the hand of God. It causes Him to intervene in the affairs of men and to work on their behalf. So, we all need more faith. Mark 9:23, “All things are possible to those who believe.” Every one of you was given a measure of faith. You were given faith before you came to Christ. The Bible says that before you come to Christ, you have to believe that He is. Well, how’d you do that? You had to have faith. We all have faith. Maybe it’s not great faith. Maybe it’s small faith.

The second thing we all have is time. We all have 168 hours a week to live. You can’t get time back, but you can redeem it. What do you do with those 168 hours? Most people can’t account for at least 25 hours. If you had $20 dollars for each of those 25 hours…that’d be $500. Can you afford to lose that per week? When you put value on something, you change your attitude about the something you put the value on. We need to get this.

We need to understand that we have two things. We have faith and we have time. I’m going to show you how that merges, and how God gives you another kind of time.

Jude 1:3, NIV. “I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” Now, that’s an interesting statement. It’s saying that at one point they all had been entrusted with that faith. But, something happened. Verse 4 says that “certain individuals slipped in among them. They were ungodly people who pervert the grace of God and deny Jesus Christ…” As soon as I read that I was reminded about the wheat and the tares. It goes on to say that God later destroyed those who didn’t believe. Remember, we’re talking about faith, and not believing.
On Monday, we were looking at Jude 1. It tells us that there are people who slip into our lives. They slip in, meaning, that you really didn’t foresee that them coming in your life was going to make a difference in a negative way. We need to be very careful. A number of enemies of the Christian faith are slipping in among us. How are they doing that? Through the media. It says in the Old Testament that there’s a day coming where the antichrist will come in through your windows. Windows. Like a computer. The enemy wants to slip in, so he uses the medium of the media. He also uses education, or a lack of it. He comes in and deceives us, and lies. We need to ask ourselves, “What’s slipped into my life while I was sleeping?” That’s what happened in the Bible. Tares were sown while they were asleep.

Here’s another thing… The culture that’s influencing our young people, and the older ones, has slipped in, and is so synonymous with our teens and our college kids, that they don’t know the difference between a liar and a pervert, or somebody who is really immoral. They honor and idolize them, and buy their materials.

It’s 2017, the beginning of the year. It’s the headgate of the year. We talked about this year of 5777 being the year of the sword. We need to draw the sword of righteousness out, and begin to purge our home and our life. The next great move of God is going to be a move of righteousness that’s going to confront the culture. And, the culture is going to have a hard time accepting the Church, because the Church is going to have to come back to righteousness. We’ll get a lot of self-righteousness, and that will cause people to be repelled. But, my righteousness and your righteousness are as filthy rags, and the only righteousness that is of value is His. I am righteous because He is righteous. He made me righteous.