Sometimes when the Lord brings conviction on you that leads to confession and repentance, your friends may not understand. They may look at what you used to do and call you a hypocrite for your new stance. But the difference between being repentant and being a hypocrite is that a hypocrite preaches against sins that he is still committing himself. A repentant person preaches against a sin that he use to commit but God has now convicted him and he has confessed it, repented and is now preaching against it to pull others out of the darkness of deception. Whenever you take back ground for the Lord that you had previously given up, you can expect attacks. That’s how the Enemy works. That’s why walking with the Lord is hard. When you are on the path walking with the Lord, the Enemy’s main goal is to knock you off. However he can do it. These attacks should only make you bolder. Bolder than a lion. They should not make you question or doubt yourself, because really you would be doubting God and what He has done for you. Job’s friends questioned him. They thought that he must be in sin because of the suffering he endured. The reality is that Job suffered his attacks because God said to Satan, “have you considered my servant Job?” God wasn’t offering Job because of his sin or because Job was a hypocrite and needed to be punished. In my humble opinion, He offered Job because of his righteousness and knew that Job could stand and teach the devil a lesson.

We need to remember that every bad thing that happens to us is not always a spanking from God, but could be an attack from the Enemy because we are doing the right things by God. And we need to remember that if we honestly are trying to live for the Lord, the attacks will come. And you can’t always listen to your friends. Sometimes they are knuckleheads.