222: A Truly Christian Response to the Election Results with Rebekah Hargraves

The Gospel-Shaped Life Podcast

I am delighted to be joining you on the show for the first solo-podcast episode in ages! Today we will be covering the important and timely topic of what a thoroughly and truly Christian response looks like to the election results of last week. May you come away from this episode edified and encouraged for the days ahead!

What I Cover on this Episode:

~The responses to the election results I’m seeing from various Christians online and what a truly, thoroughly Christian response would actually look like

~Understanding that in order for a response to be truly and inherently Christian, it has to exhibit the fruits of the Spirit

~A study of the fruits of the Spirit and how they each individually apply to the concept of the election and how we respond to it

~The divisive culture we are living in and the reality that if we as believers are called to be salt and light, it is actually our job alone to fix the divisiveness and to bring peace

~What Paul shows us is the key to living the victorious Christian life and living out the fruits of the Spirit

~What walking by the Spirit means and what it looks like

~And More!

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Resources Mentioned:

My Substack

Previous podcast episode on what it means/what it looks like to walk by the Spirit

The book I co-authored on walking by the Spirit

Quotes to Remember:

“I’m seeing a lot of responses by Christians to the election results that are not Christian in nature, responses that are beneath us, responses that do not look like our Savior Whose image we are to bare, the Jesus Whose ambassadors we are to be. So we are going to talk today about what a truly Christian response to the election results actually looks like and do so in a way that takes us through the fruits of the Spirit.”

“To have a truly Christian response to the election results, to politics, to the next four years, our response has to be characterized by the fruits of the Spirit. It has to come not from a partisan perspective, but from a truly Biblical, Christ-focused, Jesus-centered, Spirit-led perspective.”

“It is no mistake that the first fruit listed is love. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that of faith, hope, and love, love is the most important. Paul goes on to tell us in Colossians that love is the foundational attribute we must put on. John tells us God is love. The other fruits and characteristics are important, but love is the one that is foundational to all the others. It is of paramount importance.”

“For us to have a thoroughly Christian response to the election results, we must be known for loving others really, really well. Not known for our pride and gloating if we are on the side of who won, not by disdain for the winner and his supporters if we are on the side of who lost, but by a deep-seated, core-level, sincere love for all. A Christian response to the election results is that we would love one another well - Jesus said it is by our love that others would know we are His disciples - not by our politics, not by our intelligence, not by ability to win debates, not by what side of the aisle we’re on. No. We are to be known by our love. If we are not known by our love for those on all sides of the aisle, then we are doing the cause of Christ and our witness for the kingdom a grave disservice.”

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“The next fruit of the Spirit is joy. There are many in this country who are not feeling joy over this year’s election results. They are not joyful over what the next four years will hold. So if you are a believer on that side of the aisle, it can feel incredibly hard to have joy right now in light of the results of the election. But as I read this fruit of the Spirit, I thought of the Proverbs 31 woman who is able to look with joy to the future, who is able to look to whatever is coming with a peaceful smile on her countenance, with the rest and peace and comfort that come from knowing that God is on the throne no matter who is leading humanly-speaking.”

”Whatever your voting choice was, whether your candidate won this week or lost or you voted third party or didn’t vote at all, if you are a Christian, you are to have such a deep and abiding knowledge of God and of His character, His kindness, His love, His care, His compassion, and His sovereignty that you are able to look to the future with joy.”

“This is not to say there is no room at all for grieving to be done or for feeling disappointment or fear or any of the million and one feelings you could feel over who won and what the next four years will look like. If you didn’t vote for who won, all of those feelings are understandable. The Lord does not want us to stuff our feelings but rather bring them to Him and process them with Him. But at the end of the day, if we are believers, we should be able to look with joy to the future because of Who holds the future. The same goes if your candidate won last week. It is ok to feel all the joy and excitement over our candidate of choice winning. But, ultimately, we need to come back to the center of understanding that our hope is not in politics, but in Christ, that He is on the throne regardless of what earthly leaders He allows to be raised up, and that because we can trust in Him, we are able to have joy when we look to the future.”

“We need to be known by the watching world as people who actually act as if we have hope and trust (which then leads to joy no matter where we are). If we are professing believers trying to tell the world that Christ is our Savior, our hope is in Him, and He is trustworthy, then we need to be able to share with the watching world a picture of joy and of peace in this time. That needs to be our reputation. Otherwise, do we trust God? Do we have hope at all? If we can trust God with our eternity, then we need to trust Him with our right now, because He holds it all, has a plan, and brings everything together for the good of those who love Him.”

“It’s ok to feel our feelings. But if we are struggling with the results of the election, we need to be able to do enough wrestling with the Lord that we are able to come back around to a place of peace because God holds it all.”

“The next fruit is patience, which I think will be an incredibly valuable one over the next four years. It goes along with love and also goes along with the next fruit we’ll be looking at, kindness. We are to be known for our love, patience, and kindness. So often when we are interacting with someone who votes differently than we do, thinks differently than we do, has a different political or theological stance than we do, we want do debate, belittle, put down, win the argument at all costs, and gloat when we do. But I want to issue the Church a clarion call to patience and kindness in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, to have our list of priorities rightly ordered to where we do not put our politics above our theology and our call to love, but instead be able to sit down with each other and interact with patience, compassion, and empathy, being slow to speak and quick to listen and having concern for others’ concerns.”

“Paul unequivocally tells us that we are not to look merely to our own interests, but also to the interests of others. What that looks like is being concerned about what other people are concerned about whether or not you agree with the concern even being a concern. We can get to that, but the first step is sitting down with somebody as Jesus did with people from all different backgrounds and willingly listening to where they are coming from, being curious about why they have the stances they do. People who think and vote differently than we do have well thought out reasons for why they do so (just as we do with our stances), so if we can begin to extend patience and kindness to others and desire to get to know where they are coming from, that will go so much further than our desire to gloat or exhibit pride or arrogance because our candidate won. Trying to shut down the other side because ‘they are wrong’, ‘we are right’, and ‘they need to hear us’ bears no good fruit.”

“Paul tells us in Romans 2 that it is God’s kindness that leads to our repentance. So even if someone is actually wrong in their political stance where maybe we actually are right, we are going to get nowhere by being unkind. So a Christian response to the election results and to what will happen over the next four years is to extend kindness and compassion to those who voted differently than we did. That is the only way we are going to begin to fix the divisive culture we live in that we are all - no matter what side of the isle we are on-complaining about.”

“If we as believers are called - if it is our mission alone, not given to anyone else - to be the salt and light of the world, then we have to be the ones to go first in a divisive culture to seek to bring harmony and unity where possible, to bring peace and reconciliation as the hands and feet of Christ. It is no one else’s responsibility or call but our own. We cannot expect anyone else to do this work; it is our duty. Where we see a divisive culture, a divisive church, whatever it is, it is our call and mission to go first. We are the ones sent forth into that divisiveness to shine the light and love of Jesus into it. That is our mission.”

“Far be it from us to be the ones who are actually making things worse. Far be it from us to have our priorities so skewed as to make things worse when it is our job to make things better by the grace of God and through His Spirit.”

“Faithfulness is the next fruit of the Spirit and is yet another example of how applicable these fruits are to the election results and how we respond to them. With the results we have been given, I would issue forth to my brothers and sisters in Christ the message that we need to be known for our faithfulness - our being full of faith. May we be full of faith. May we look forward to the future with hope and trust and peace and rest as we look to the future with a smile on our countenance, not because of who is or is not in the White House, but because the good, wise, compassionate God of the Bible is the One still on the throne.”

“The fruit of the Spirit of goodness reminds us that we are to be characterized by all that is good, true, and beautiful, with our minds set on the kinds of thoughts Paul outlines for us in Philippians 4:8. We are to be known for our goodness. Not a holier-than-thou type of ‘goodness’, but a goodness characterized by purity, child-like innocence, humility, peace, and kindness that are above reproach.”

“Gentleness is the next fruit of the Spirit to look at, and we are called to be people of gentleness. In fact, James tells us that the wisdom that is from above, true godly wisdom, is first peaceful and gentle. It is the wisdom from down under that is arrogant, prideful, gloating, and divisive. We are instead called to be gentle. There is a misconception in the church today that often says that if you are kind, gentle, and loving, that you are at risk of falling down a slippery slope somewhere into sinful living or unorthodox principles. But that is not what Scripture says. The principles we are to be known for are literally the fruits of the Spirit. If at any point we have the audacity to, in essence, say that the fruits of the Spirit are not what we are to be focused on, there is a problem. These fruits are literally the characteristics of the Spirit of God and are to be what He cultivates in us.”

“Gentleness is not weakness. It is not a mamby-pamby ‘anything goes’ lack of standards. But your standards as a Christian must be surrounded, undergirded, covered with gentleness, with love, with these things that Paul says are the most important. So as we interact with people who voted differently than we did, with people on the side of the next administration, with those on the opposite side, and with everyone in between, we must be known for our gentleness. A Christian response to the election results is to treat others with gentleness.”

“The last fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Paul lists this one last and shows us that this is the one that we must have in order to have all the others because we must fight against our flesh in order to walk out the fruits of the Spirit.”

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