When you see the culture degrading and moving farther from the true God, don’t think that faithful living is impossible. There were many who remained faithful in the time of King Ahab and there are faithful believers in much more difficult situations around the world right now. God’s promises remain true. We can continue to the end. Not because we are so clever, but because Jesus is so good.

It is easy to become defeatist about being a Christian in this world. We can see how difficult it is to resist temptation. We can see the prominent people on Instagram speaking about how they deconstructed their faith and are feeling so much happier with life apart from church. We see laws being passed or proposed that make life more complicated for Christians. How can we continue on like this? How is it possible to be faithful when we are so weak and our culture is so strong?

To answer that, let’s consider the time period covered by the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Kings. People in every age assume that they are the first ones to live in difficult times; it is not true. The books of Kings cover a time period from roughly 950 to 600 BC. If you were a believer in the true God back then, life was generally very oppressive. The political leaders often actively hunted those who believed in the true God. The religious situation was a disaster, with people worshipping other gods like Baal, degrading to child sacrifice and adoption of Syrian gods later in 2 Kings. The overall flow of the story is a tragedy with Israel destroyed and Judah off in exile in Babylon. If there was a time to feel a little defeatist as a believer, it was to live in those days.

Yet if we walk away from the books of Kings just feeling defeated and wondering why anyone would bother trying to be faithful, we have missed the point.

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