Something my dad and I discussed often, in the years before his death, was the importance of courageous personal conviction. In the context of the true faith of Jesus Christ and the historical Church of God, nothing could be more essential.
We have arrived in the 250th year of the American era. There are parallels between the courage of our spiritual convictions and the courage of the temporal or political (as in “of the people” not “of the modern political arena”) convictions of those who made up the founding generation of the American Revolution.
There was an ideal of liberty that was expressed in the years preceding 1776. Christopher Flannery, guest speaker at Hillsdale College in 2026, puts it this way: “It is the eloquent record of the conception and articulation of the American idea of political freedom in pamphlets, petitions, state papers, letters, sermons, constitutions, resolves, bills and declarations of rights, memoirs, diaries, journals, treaties, and speeches—mostly in a compressed period in the 1760s and 1770s—in which a revolutionary generation learned to think and act like the Americans they were becoming” (Flannery, Imprimis, June/July 2026).
A “generation learned to think and act like the Americans they were becoming.”
Should not the same be said of us? That a generation of those called to the fullness of biblical truth, who anticipate resurrection into the very Family of God, should learn to think and act like the God-beings they are becoming?
A “mere knowledge” versus “living action”
Flannery continues, delineating what the “real” American Revolution means as it passes onward to future generations: “This experience should not be seen as merely historical. To experience the real American Revolution, and not just the record of it, is to experience the idea of political freedom becoming active in our hearts, minds, and lives. It is to experience being free…in the active exercise of the capacities required for self-government. It is an experience that requires, as the Virginia Declaration of Rights proclaimed in 1776, ‘a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and [a] frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.’ ”
Again, putting aside the political concepts, we can see some very clear spiritual parallels. To experience true spiritual freedom (bound up in obedience to God and His law) it can be said of us that God’s way should become active in our hearts, minds, and lives. In fact, it was commanded us to do so by Jesus Christ, Himself!
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31, NKJV)
To love God is to obey Him. Just as to love liberty, according to the founding American generation, was to express it by living it in the form of justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, virtue, and recurrence to fundamental principles—which to the American founders were rooted in the Ten Commandments.
Just “knowing” about God’s way isn’t enough, it must become so much a part of our daily action and personal moral character that no matter our mistakes—and there will be some—we rise again to reach for God’s way and truth, over and over again.
It is even to be willing to die for that spiritual ideal. And our Savior does ask that of us.
Maintain your engine of conviction
History offers no small number of examples of American Revolutionary heroes and heroines who sacrificed greatly for their political ideals. But the Bible, in Hebrews 11, offers us an even more compelling list of examples of those who possessed living faith, and followed God—some prospering and others suffering—no matter the cost.
Is it too much to ask that we, who live in a very materially privileged time, should be just as willing a sacrifice?
To develop that sacrificial mentality, we must put our spiritual ideal above self. We have to become a self-sustaining engine of courageous, personal conviction by holding fast to the truth as we have received it, resisting the urge to become the arbiter of our own personal pet doctrines by dabbling in the Devil’s playground of “ideas” that tickle our ears—to which many, who preceded us, have fallen victim.
The race we run is by no means a “mere” sport. It is deadly serious.
“If we aspire to…live a godly life in genuine conviction of God’s true way as delineated in His Word, the Bible, we must be sure that we do so in humility, sincerity, and in truth before our Creator. Any other way, no matter how appealing, is simply not God’s way!” (Randy Stiver, “Beware of Just Doing—The God Thing,” theArrowheadJournal.com, May 4, 2024)
– Amanda Stiver
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