You know the song that says, “I shall not be, I shall not be moved. Anchored in Jehovah, I shall not be moved.” You think about the Bible verse, “Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, anchored in deep, not gonna bend, and not gonna break, not gonna be moved from its position. It is fixed, it is firm, it is established, it is set.”
I wanna talk to you for just a moment about convictions. What is a conviction? A conviction is not an opinion. A conviction is not a preference. A conviction is a firm or fixed belief. I think about a preference. A preference is, “Well, I like it this way.” An opinion might be, “I think it ought to be this way.” But a conviction is, “God wants it this way.”
There might be some areas where you can allow preference to enter in. You might have a preference on the color of carpet in your church. You might have a preference on, “Well, do we want padded chairs or pews?” Preference. But there’s other areas that ought to be a conviction. You ought to have a conviction on the music of your church. You gotta have a conviction! Songs, hymns, spiritual songs, that’s what we’re gonna sing. Psalms to God, praise to God, doctrinal, deep, biblically accurate songs. You gotta have a conviction on the Bible. We’re not gonna move from the Word of God. We believe we have the preserved, inspired, inerrant, infallible, perfect Word of God. We’re not gonna change, give away our King James Bible.
You gotta have a conviction on the Gospel. The Gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ according to the Scripture, 1 Corinthians 15. Christ died that whosoever will believe in Him, they don’t have to perish, but they can be born again. And we’re not gonna move on that. We believe in that. We have a conviction on baptism. Baptism by immersion for believers, not for salvation, but the first step of obedience after salvation. These things are not negotiable.
We have a conviction on the local church. We believe in the church. “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of God, where two or three are gathered together in my name. There will I be in the midst of them. Upon this rock, I’ll build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
And in this day and hour, Christian, get some convictions. Curtis Hudson made the statement, “Convictions are spark plugs for action.” You wouldn’t have a book of Acts not the way we have it today had those first century Christians only had preferences and opinions. I’m glad they had convictions. Stay by the stuff. “I shall not be, I shall not be moved.”
I hope this has been a help to your Christian life today.
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