My sophomore and junior year of Scott Community High School football there were so many guys on the football team (just under 90 counting freshman) that coach had a travel squad list. Every Thursday night, as the players went to the practice field, an assistant coach would put up a list on the field house wall of who was going to travel that Friday night to the game on the bus.

So after practice there was always a mad rush of sophomores and juniors to that list to see who was going to get to go to the game and suit up? The freshman never traveled with the varsity in those days.

When your name was not on the travel list, you were disappointed because that meant you were staying home.

The truth hurt.

Early in the football season of my junior year the head coach offered to give me a ride home from practice one night. So I jumped in his pickup and as soon as he started driving he said to me, “You are good enough to start on the varsity team this year, but I have seven seniors at your position and they have been with me for four years, so I need to figure out how to get them in the game. So you will never be a starter on varsity. Next year will be your year.”

The truth hurt.

Jesus as he stood before Pontius Pilate about to be condemned to death on the cross says to Pilate, “I have come to tell the truth.” Jesus was a radical. He was swimming upstream against the current while most of humanity was going against him and it got him killed.

Today, as Christians, we also are called to be different in our generation. What have you done today that separates you from the non-Christians?

Here is something that will make you a radical in your generation.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And the truth hurts.