“What does popularity mean to you, signify to you? What does it mean to be popular? Are you popular? Have you ever thought about the strong desire in some people to be popular?
Popularity has many facets to it, and when we speak of popularity or someone being popular, we immediately intimate that they are liked by many people, sought out by other people, and sought after by many people. To be popular is very often recognized by how active, how involved, how much in demand a person is where other people are concerned.
Very often popularity has a price tag, and this price tag is according to the type of popularity a person is involved in or with. To be a ‘nice guy’ does not always encourage a rousing popularity. To be a ‘friendly guy’ does not always infer a social whiz. To be a great leader many times does not show the person as a popular subject; controversial perhaps, but not popular in the sense that men like to be referred to in a ‘Good Joe’ relationship.
Let’s look back on the time Our Lord walked the earth. Could we refer to Him as being popular, or should we refer to Him as being controversial, well-known, a subject of conversation in many circles? To walk in the physical role that bears sound teachings, sound values, sound standards, sound thinking, logic, and of course, solid truth, rarely makes a person popular.
To be considered a person of frankness is not in the same category as sound truth. Frankness can be spoken, involving personal opinion, theory, personal acceptance or rejection, and of course, many other points in which man’s nature, culture and environment are the influences.
A preacher can be popular, well-liked, sought out and remembered, especially if he is gentle, and in all outward appearances, bears a charitable front. Let this same man develop a strength, a delivery, teaching sound moral values, sound moral standards, showing charity in a strict sense of the word, giving others leadership that will spur them on to great goals, using their physical, mental and Spiritual capacities beyond the average means, plus demanding that people see the full, True Purpose of life combined with the correct manner in how they should walk, there is a good chance you could not determine this man as a popular man.
Men want truth, they want someone to be action for them and extend to them motivation to better themselves, but when you touch on a man’s moral strengths, and how he must change to conduct himself in a more pure atmosphere, action and path, showing him that popularity can be a very trite thing, you will find that only the strong and the brave and the truthful hang in there for more direction.
Man puts a price tag on everything. What price tag do you have on your time, on your own worth, and above all, do you have a price tag on your Soul? Have you thought about the poor excuses of how valuable your time is, and, in your own way, refused your Soul the Light God is willing to give you each day? If you are so covered with price tags that you shut out the Light, remember this: God’s Vision is Pure and the price tags you wear He pierces through. When you are taught to be committed to God, and you are reminded of your Soul, be thankful to God for the person who cared enough to not care about being popular, but truly cared about your Soul.
A sound note to remember is to be aware of evangelism in the wholesale manner it is conducted in our time. To find Fact and Truth, be sure you are not blinded by the spirituality driven by some people who infect you with compromise, watering down, diminishing, causing you to lose sight of sound doctrine already established; also, their puncturing the barrier of Logic and Truth with delusion that appears on the surface to give spirituality a homespun status. Do not be taken in by another man’s fervor in how he connects himself to God and how he feels you must accept God in a humanistic manner. Remember, you have your will, your intellect and your Soul.
Evangelism can be very detrimental to the naive, the ethereal, and those who find the easy way in spirituality as being for them. In reality, a sound mind, a sound body, and a sound Spiritual attitude, approach, belief, makes a very healthy human being.”
