It seems that these days the louder people shout, the more others listen – even if they're in the minority, even if what they're espousing lies somewhere between lunacy and extremism. If they disagree with you, they want to shut you down, cancel you out, erase you from the public square. And that's incredibly intimidating.

In many parts of the world, it's become unacceptable to say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Crazy as it may seem, that simple statement of the plainly obvious truth is viewed by some (only by a few, but still by some) as bigoted and offensive.

And so, the average Joe like you and me, can feel intimidated into stepping away from speaking the truth, into withdrawing from conversations that matter.

That persecution, whatever form it may take (and I've only cited one example here) has been happening since time immemorial. Those early Christians suffered terrible persecution. So how did they react? Did they withdraw? No. They prayed. They prayed, in fact, like this:

Acts 4:29-30 And now, Lord, listen to what they are saying. They are trying to make us afraid. We are your servants. Help us to say what you want us to say without fear. Help us to be brave by showing us your power. Make sick people well. Cause miraculous signs and wonders to happen by the authority of Jesus, your holy servant."

Those early Christians didn't cower in the face of persecution. They prayed for courage. They prayed that God would help them speak without fear. They prayed for God's power to work in them and through them.

When you feel intimidated, pray. Because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

There are times when evil strikes at us from the outside, in … people, circumstances, systems, social trends that attack the good that we're trying to do. It's happened to you too, right? But there's nothing new in any of that.

Not many years after Jesus had walked this earth, His Apostles were out there doing good.

Acts 8:9 Now there was a man named Simon who lived in that city. Before Philip came there, Simon had been doing magic and amazing all the people of Samaria. He bragged and called himself a great man.

And people believed him. So facing someone like that … well, it's easy to feel intimidated. Yet when he saw the amazingly powerful miracles of the Apostles, he wanted some of the action, so he offered to pay them for some of their secret sauce. But …

Acts 8:20-24 Peter said to Simon, "You and your money should both be destroyed because you thought you could buy God's gift with money. You cannot share with us in this work. Your heart is not right before God. Change your heart! Turn away from these evil thoughts and pray to the Lord. Maybe he will forgive you. I see that you are full of bitter jealousy and cannot stop yourself from doing wrong." Simon answered, "Both of you pray to the Lord for me, so that what you have said will not happen to me."

Don't be intimidated when evil assails you. Because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

'Evil', I think you'd agree, is a strong word. So there are not many things in our lives to which we'd ascribe that label – 'evil'. A murderer, sure. A child abuser, absolutely. But stuff in our own lives? Not really.

And yet, we can all look back at some particularly bad things we've done – perhaps there are one or two still lingering in your life; husbands who unthinkingly speak harshly to their wives over and over again, day after day destroying that most precious of relationships; people in the workplace who boast and take the credit for what others have done.

We could rattle off a list as long as your arm of ordinary everyday occurrences that honestly, given their destructive impact, ought well to be labelled as 'evil'.

1 John 3:8 The devil has been sinning since the beginning. Anyone who continues to sin belongs to the devil. The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil's work.

That's God's take on all that stuff and I think you'd agree with me, He doesn't mince His words. But the good news – the Gospel, as it's called, of Jesus Christ – is this. That He came to destroy the devil's work.

In other words, the Gospel displaces and disempowers the evil that assails us from within.

But how does that work in practice? What's the rubber-hits-the-road takeaway in your life and mine? When we let Jesus into our lives, not as some nice to have add-on, but as the One for whom we live, as the Lord of our lives … this is what He does. He destroys the devil's work from within.

After all, that's what He came to do.

And that's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.