(Nuggets from 1 Corinthians 1:18)
Corinth was a city that worshiped intellect. They chased eloquence like we chase validation today. If your message couldn’t trend in their marketplace, it was trash to them. So when Paul came preaching a crucified Messiah, they rolled their eyes and didn't believe a Savior would die. "A King with a crown of thorns? That couldn’t be God. That had to be foolishness."
But God was doing something the philosophers could not decode. He was hiding victory inside shame. He was putting resurrection inside a tomb. He was making salvation depend on surrender, not strategy. And that is why the Cross still offends. Because it tells every self-made man, “You cannot climb your way to God. You must bow.”
The church at Corinth forgot this. They wanted power that looked powerful. But God gave them power that looked weak. Their error was not unbelief. It was preference. They preferred a Gospel that made sense to men over a Gospel that made them holy before God.
And that is the quiet drift today. We are not denying the Cross with our mouths, but are are bypassing it with our lifestyle. We want grace without grief for sin. We want revival without repentance. And when that happens, our Christianity becomes loud, but lifeless. We can quote power, but we do not walk in it.
Here is the truth that will judge us all: The Cross is not something you can vote on or change to suit yourself. To the perishing it will always look foolish, because it destroys the very thing they love. But to the saved, it is everything. It is the power that breaks addiction. It is the power that kills bitterness at the root. It is the power that makes a dirty life clean.
You do not work up this power. You walk into it when you embrace the shame of Christ above the approval of men.
You can defend truth on your status and deny it in your choices. But the Cross sees through screens. It demands all of you or none of you.
So the Holy Spirit is pulling us back to one place, "The Cross." If you have been ashamed to be different, lay it down. If you have been editing your faith to keep people, stop. If the Cross has become small in your eyes, ask God to lift it again. Because the moment it becomes big to you, you will stop being moved by mockery and start being moved by mercy.
That is HOLINESS. Not perfectionism. Not performance. It is a life that says, “I will carry what the world calls foolish, because I have tasted the power that only the Cross can give.”
This is HOLINESS CHALLENGE
DAY 170 OF 365 (2026)
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