"so here's what i want you to do, God helping you: take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. instead, fix your attention on God. you'll be changed from the inside out. readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you"-romans 12:2 (the message)
i have been convicted lately. call me a spiritual adulterer, call me what you will. too often i succumb to pleasures and pressures of this world. if you know something is wrong and yet you do it anyway, how is that making you a better person? how is that letting you grow your self up? how can you advance when you are only bringing your self down?
these questions are obviously rhetorical.
but this is a thought that has been on the forefront of my mind for some time now, it surfaces multiple times a day and kicks me when i least expect it.
when i look at the world my heart just hurts. i think of my future children growing into God-fearing individuals and because i know how tempting and luring and deceitful the sins of this world are, it honestly scares me. i know my God is bigger and stronger and greater.
the world tells me that it is okay to indulge in one night stands with a different partner every night, be welcomed at wild parties every weekend, partake in drugs because after all YOLO, drink away the night because you never know what tomorrow holds.
it doesn't even have to be that extreme.
it's okay to lie as long as you are helping someone see the "truth," it's truly okay to curse and say things you would never want your grandmother to say because she probably won't hear them anyway, it's okay to take a few extra dollars from the register at work because who is going to notice, it's okay to cheat on your girlfriend or boyfriend because the relationship is probably going to fail anyway, it's okay to treat your body without care, it's okay to walk out the door with half of your body exposed, it's okay to spend more engrossed in work than family and friends.
the world argues that it's perfectly acceptable to do all these seemingly harmless things because you're not a "bad" human being and you definitely haven't killed anyone or gone to jail. you compare yourself to your friends, your neighbors, your classmates, your teammates, your coworkers. at least you haven't done what they have done....you're an upstanding citizen, and thus the world spins round.i want to challenge the world. i don't want to take every thing at face value. why is there this tug-o-war between what is defined as good and evil? God tells me to be transformed by His words and to not conform to the detestable ways of the world. it is quite evident in my life (especially if you have spent even a split second with me that i am flawed and have serious shortcomings) that when i turn my gaze towards A it leads to walking near B which causes me to dance in the moment with C.
so if i know that A warrants C, why do i even hang on to the slightest hope of aquatinting myself with those letters? fill those letters A, B, and C with any struggle, trial, affliction infecting your life. i have my list tucked away and it's not something of which i could ever be proud.
but the world really has no interest in my spiritual growth, my strides in character, my advancements in mental maturity. it's only NOW NOW NOW with the world, "sleep-when-you-die" mentality. all my short comings cause me to regress significantly if i do not actively correct myself and exercise discipline. i now know that brushing the surface of A has an increased likelihood that i will march myself straight to B and on to C. i know this first hand. the things i find in myself that are out of alignment with the words of God hinder who i am called and desire to be. the world and so many people in the world (though they may be excellent people in and of themselves) do not really understand why eating disorders, drunkenness, vanity, sexual indulgences, and outbursts of anger among other vices are wrong.
this week has been exciting. on the forefront of my mind has been the truth of God in that "Jesus came to give me life and life more abundantly." when i settle for the alphabetical slippery-slope, i am putting God in a box and telling Him that i am perfectly content with second best. i am basically indian-giving to the Creator of the Universe. WHAT!? God gave roses a beautiful scent and an exquisite form. He gave the mountains perfect slopes and elegant peaks. God designed my life to be abundant and fruitful, and when i don't actively work on being all who God called me to be and instead succumb to the right-here-right-now mantra, i am digging myself a deeper and more massive hole. i limit myself in sundry ways.
don't let the world transform you, steal your focus, define your joy: it is so much harder said than done, but in the end, i can't fathom living strictly for this world and not forever with the Maker of each fingerprints and the Lover of my heart.
when the world tells you to go Right,
follow God's truths and take every Left.
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