How do you feel about living differently than everyone else around you? I don’t think we really like it. Imagine if someone from a wildly different culture moves in next door: strange customs, strange food, strange habits. How do we like it? But what about when it comes to living set apart in this world as Christians? That's hard work. We don’t enjoy looking different. We don’t like being the object of other people’s scorn. We don’t like being blamed for everything that’s wrong in this world. So we try to put a foot in both worlds. We don’t hide our Christianity, but we don’t really talk about it either. We don’t join in with other people’s sin, but we don’t really say no to it either. It's easy for us to sit on the fence.

And as this fight goes on we get worn out. We get lazy in our spiritual living because it’s just easier to do what everyone else is doing.

What if we had a different attitude about this kind of suffering for being different? Christ's attitude was that he was different because he was the savior. His suffering resulted in the forgiveness of sins. And in place of sin, he points you to heaven to see your heavenly Father who is truly pleased with you and does not want you to be anywhere else but right next to him for all eternity. You live under the unbreakable favor of God…because Christ suffered.

And so when we suffer because we're different than this world, we follow in the footsteps of Christ. Through his suffering we have life. Through our suffering we are reminded of that life.