Be Counter-Cultural – The Presidential Prayer Team

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. – Romans 12:18

You have seen examples of ostracism in news accounts, online, perhaps on social media, even in person. These days they call it “cancel culture,” but it amounts to the same thing as boycotting or shunning, typically of an individual who is deemed to have acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner, or in a manner not consistent with the beliefs and viewpoints of those doing the canceling. It can involve celebrities, politicians, countries, or your neighbor. It has been seen at its collective worst in the riots of the summer of 2020 all across America where groups intent on their own form of “vigilante justice” are hostile to authority and anyone who holds a position not in line with their own.

God has a different idea. He wants your life to be a counter to the popular cancel culture. Christians have been called to love one another and to also love the lost, not ostracize them. While the cancel culture holds grudges, God tells believers to forgive one another (Colossians 3:13). While the cancel culture stokes rage, God says to let it go (Ephesians 4). While the cancel culture bands together in bitterness, Scripture tells you to assemble with one another, loving as the Lord loves and encouraging one another (Hebrews 10). The precepts of the cancel culture are the total opposite of Christianity. You are called to be counter-cultural!

Ask God today for the strength and wisdom to enable you to follow the mandate of today’s verse: “As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Pray for those caught up in the cancel culture, especially in the halls of Congress, to be shown a new way to live through the loving example of believers around them living out the truth of the Word of God.

Today’s Verse: Romans 12:18

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Recommended for further reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.