Respond. Series

Are You Responding?

Rom. 12:1-2| NLT

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Anti-conformity

The world in which we live is broken, empty and hollow. Creation is a fraction of what it once was. The best analogy which I have heard that I can tell you to is that creation and humanity is like a fish out of water. The fish can survive for a limited amount of time, but during it’s time out of the water, it is simply going to struggle and gasp for air. That is what life is like for us without Jesus Christ.

Without the foundation of God in our lives, we are simply struggling to survive, we are struggling to get by and we are all gasping for air. We find ourselves hoping against hope and praying against the odds as we try to fight against the tides that keep crashing against us.

We have gone ahead and rejected God as Lord, Savior, Redeemer and helper. We have turned our backs on Him and embraced sin as the answer to all of our questions. We’ve embraced sin as our savior. We allow sin to control and manipulate our lives. Our world is constructed according to the sinful nature and the sinful lifestyles which we want to engage in.

Rather than turn to God and live, we turn to sin and allow sin to implement a structure for us. We live according to the rules and regulations which sin has deemed necessary and we have adopted a new way of life. We have adopted a life that doesn’t involve God and allows us to feed our own desires and our own pleasures.

Tolerance is our religion. Our philosophy is relativity. Truth is relative to the individual. Post modern thought consumes us so that everyone is right in his or her own eyes and should live according to their own beliefs without the fear of being ridiculed or made fun of. That just doesn’t really work out that well, though does it?

The problem is, sin doesn’t care about people. It doesn’t care about feelings or emotions because sin is completely absent of God. So the furtherance of the world structure is built to promote the ideal of success and perfection based off money, power, and attraction. Think about who is influential in our world.

First you have world leaders. These people are powerful and successful because they are leaders leading countries. Most of them are rich or very well off because of their position of power. Success is seen in these people because of who they control and their pockets.

Secondly, movie stars, rock stars and models. These people are beautiful and make a lot of money. They are exalted and placed on pedestals because of their level of attraction. These people make millions of dollars every year. They are, what we call, successful. And we want to be just like them too! We want our shot at “Fame”. We want be on the center stage, singing for the rock band or the girl band. We want all the popularity, all the girls or the boys. We want to live in the mansion and we want a 3 different houses in different states. We want the glamour and the power and the money, we want it all. We want the American dream to come true for us.

That is the system of the world in which we live. That is how sin wants you to live. It wants you to gain the world. Gain the pleasures this world can offer. Do everything you can to get noticed, to get ahead and see if you come out on top. Become a superstar and gain popularity at any cost. Don’t worry about who you step on, or who you hurt or who you leave behind in the process. Don’t worry, because once you’re a celebrity or you’re in power, you are untouchable. That’s right-you can do whatever you want, whatever your heart desires and nothing will happen to you. You can get involved in scandals and live a drug infused lifestyle and it’s not going to matter. To get ahead and get on top of the world and to gain the world you have do something though-conform. Conform to the standard the world has set forth. Conform to the ways of the world and you’re in.