the world is moving and morphing at warp speed and the meaningless, dead-end chatter and enemy-crafted banter is piling up online like rush hour traffic. Christ is being discarded. biblical values are being marginalized more and more. influence is the currency and increasingly, Christians are broke. if you choose to roam aimlessly and blend into the online world, some pay perish – eternally. @stickyjesus
blend. blend in.
ugh.
when i read that, distaste rose up in my heart!
i dont want to blend in!
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.
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:1-2 MSG, AMP, NKJV
our challenge is to be nonconformists. to not blend in. to be different. to be counter culture.
or on the flip side…
its to conform to God’s Kingdom culture, to be recognizable as His child, to be of His world, not of the world around us.
blending in to me reeks of compromise, silence, head bowing, grayness and living limited.
but when we dont blend in we make a stand for righteousness, we walk by faith not by sight, we love, give, rise up and live to please God.
i dont want to blend in. i know i am not perfect, that i am flawed, but my heart leans towards wanting to be holy and live for Jesus, BECAUSE it pleases Him and BECAUSE He gave His all for me that i might be saved and rescued.
and so i want to live holy, faultless and innocent.
i want to live transformed. the new me wants to live.
Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17 AMP
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed— not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence— continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life— in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour for nothing. Philippians 2:12-16
when we blend in, we hide the light.
when we compromise, we dim the light.
to shine we must be different from the darkness.
the reality is: We are a Christians. We are forgiven. We are righteous. We are a children of God. We are loved. We are saved. We are redeemed. We are the light of the world. We are called. We are chosen. We are a servant of God. We are filled with the Holy Spirit. We are witnesses empowered by God. We are ministers of reconciliation. We are ambassadors. We are supernatural.
Different.
Don’t blend in. Don’t hide the great things that God has done and is doing. Don’t hide GOD from the world. Don’t hide the light.
Light will always penetrate darkness. It is a law of nature. It is the same way in the spiritual realm. When the light of God shows up, it literally shows up, and the darkness flees before it. It must, because that’s what darkness does when light comes. Simple.
We are not our own? For we were bought at a price ; we were rescued from the useless way of life that we learned from your ancestors. But we know that we were not rescued by such things as silver or gold that don’t last forever. we were rescued by the precious blood of Christ, that spotless and innocent lamb ; so it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
1 Peter 1:19, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Galatians 2:20
We are not of this world and we don’t cling to it. We make a choice to live our lives in this world, living and breathing and physical, but we are citizens with a Holy Mighty King whom we serve. We don’t blend in with the world. That takes a decision to be made and a decision to be lived upon.
Live bold obedient lives. Make the choice to follow God. Don’t blend yourselves in by compromising. Don’t camouflage yourself by blending in with the world and disobeying God. Don’t let compromise become a way of life. Be holy and follow God.
Don’t compromise in the way you talk.
Don’t compromise in what you wear.
Don’t compromise in relationships.
Don’t compromise in what you watch.
Don’t compromise in what you do socially, in the music you listen to, in the places you go, in the conversations you have, in the computer games you play, in the things you read…
The goal is not to live gray lives but to live lives knowing our awesome amazing God that stretched out his arms on the cross, as Jesus Christ, dying to make the way for us to be saved and clean and forgiven and new. The call is to not blend in but to stand out as lights in this world.
