Rowing Upstream

Put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD.

Joshua 24:23

As John and Debbie canoed down the Arkansas River, they decided to turn around and try rowing upstream for a while. It took about ten minutes for exhaustion to set in, and they gladly reversed course and let themselves be carried.

The current of our culture is downward, and many people just drift along with the moral flow. Living for Christ is like rowing upstream. The entertainment industry churns out nonstop programs and movies designed to convert us to secular thinking.

Take romance and marriage, for example. If a visitor from space watched an evening of television, he’d think premarital sex was the greatest discovery in history. He would see divorce, cohabitation, same-sex marriage, and immodesty portrayed as glamorous and glorious.

Yet the Bible says, “Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people” (Ephesians 5:3 NIV). We can’t escape our culture, but we don’t have to be shaped by it. We have to paddle against the current.

How long can we stay at the oars? The Lord strengthens those who obey Him. Trust Him to row against the flow.