Back in the late 80s, I was speaking to a high school rising senior.

He was discouraged. He was despondent.

And as I began to probe and he was not kind of forthcoming right away, why he's despondent,

why he's so discouraged and feeling bad.

And finally, I got to the bottom of it.

And it was just simply this.

He was not what you call a great athlete, and his father pressured him to play in a certain sports team at school.

And being not a great athlete, the coach would not put him there very often, but the occasions in which the coach put him into play, he was not doing very well.

But his father persisted. Why can't you play like so-and-so? Why don't you succeed like so-and-so? Why don't you watch so-and-so and imitate? Why don't you do like so and so? Why don't you watch so and so on and you

imitate? Why don't you do, see how so and so gets the applause. And then in the end, he said,

you know, I finally figured out that my father's ambitions for me is to be popular and I can't be.

I probably learned from that experience, learned from this young man,

that popularity at any price lingers deep in people's spirits. There are some people long for that

more than anything else in the world. Now, don't misunderstand me. I am not

recommending that we be out of our God our way to become unpopular. I'm not saying that you need

to get out of your way to be obnoxious just to prove that you're a Christian. That's not what I'm

saying at all. In fact, to be obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious doesn't really enhance our testimony.

On the other hand, popularity at any price has a habit of leading to a disastrous consequences,

which reminds me a story of the mom who was trying to tell her son to go to school one morning, and he wouldn't go to school. He stayed in bed, and she kept saying, you need to go to school. They said, I'm not going to school. You need to go to school. He said, I'm not popular at school. I'm not going to school. Finally, she said, you should go to school. He said, nobody likes me there. He said, the teachers don't like me,

the kids don't like me, the bus drivers don't like me, and even the custodians don't like me.

And the mother insisted, you've got to go to school. You are healthy, you've got a lot to learn,

you're a leader, and you have a lot to offer. And furthermore,

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