How Do You Fit In?

How Do You Fit In?

3/23/13



We have all stood in front of a mirror in an outfit and asked ourselves if we look fat and some of us have stood in that position and asked would our kids wear this outfit in public.  These types of questions are common place in western society and it drives many of us to look around us and notice what others are wearing or not wearing to provide answers for these questions.  But what about the other aspects of the world and how do they reflect on our beliefs and principles and do we even recognize that some of these aspects are wrong.  There is not much we can do about living in this world but it is our responsibility to understand that there are things that the world offers that we should stay away from for it only clouds our differences from the world.

My family and I recently visited my brother and his family in Arizona.  It was a great visit and we did many things in the short period of time that we were down there.  My brother lives in a very large town and there are many things to do, with very little time concerns.  I live in the opposite conditions in which my town is very small and even the city a few miles away is nowhere close to the size of the town my brother resides in.  So my time constraints are relevant to our lives.

One day while we were there all of us went to one of the large malls that was close by my brother’s house.  We had been to this mall before but it was a local attraction so we decided to invade it once again this year.  It is a fairly large mall with a huge variety of shops inside and one could almost spend all day in this mall and not really hit every store, in other words the ladies would love it.  There were people everywhere and one could not walk without bumping into someone every few feet or so.  It was your typical large mall setting.

The boys took off in our own direction and we were mainly interested in talking about things that had occurred since the last time all of us had visited and the ladies went off in their own direction to shop for things that they felt like they could not get back home; all to which is a normal outing.  As the day progressed “us” boys found ourselves at one end of the mall that had some specialty shops that are considered by most to be popular shops to visit.  I decided not to join the other boys for this adventure and at that moment I began to look for an empty bench that I could occupy.  After locating one, I said that I would be right over there sitting on the bench and will wait till they get done with their looking around in the shop.  It was not a large bench but a nice comfortable one in which I could rest a bit before continuing down the hall with the other boys, or so I thought.  Never believe God takes a vacation when you take a vacation.

This is where God decided to have me participate in a little survey about humans and what their hearts say to everyone else.  Being in the medical field I know that a survey or study does not and cannot be accurately completed in just a few minutes and it takes a long time to get the specifics down but God does not operate in the time frame of mankind and it was obvious that He wanted to show me something about the heart and how it functions.

He brought the scripture about bring a part of the world to my mind and then asked me to look at the people that passed by me.  He asked me to look at the shops that they were entering and leaving and to assess their hearts as they did this task.  Seemed simple enough since I could quickly estimate that the majority of the people that I was going to be looking at would not be Christians, but not knowing the actual details of their lives made this survey even more specific in which I will share in a moment.

See the survey is not about how they were dressed or how they conducted themselves while they went into certain types of shops.  It was not even about how they walked or talked as they walked down the halls of the mall, but it was about how they portray themselves on the level of their hearts and did they even recognize how they were responding to the world by their actions.

We all know that the world promotes its own agenda and that agenda is considered to be what is acceptable for everyone.  We also understand that this agenda will include thousands of ideas and proposals in reality not everyone will agree with, but for the most part will accept as “the norm” and move on with their lives.  But this acceptance process by humans is what the core of the survey was that God wanted me to see.  We accept many things in mass and do not give a second thought about them and for the majority of the time can complete this without suffering any worldly consequences.  However, the real question at hand here is what about the consequences to our hearts and the damage that is secretly done when we allow these actions to infiltrate our lives on a regular basis.

Let me take for instance the modern look that the girls are told to wear now.  Anyone who has been to the grocery store, the mall or even a local restaurant will immediately know what I am going to briefly describe.  The articles of clothing that the majority of the girls in western society leave hardly anything to imagine, not just for the boys but for anyone else who comes into contact with these ladies.   Why does the world promote this type of personal presentation of oneself in public?  Because it is the popular thing to do to make each person acceptable to others eyes.  It lures people towards them and allows people to like them for what they are wearing all the while not having the responsibility of getting to know these people personally.  It is a surface acceptance that the world uses in order to achieve their acceptance plan, but it only isolates and destroys everything that is pure within their lives.  And when this event occurs that person’s heart becomes jaded to reality of what is about to happen in their lives, what has happened in their lives and what is happening in their lives.

Is wearing clothes that are considered modern or “in style” considered to be the reason a person changes their views about things?  Obvious answer is no, however the reactionary views of others could be one of the motivating factors that cause this young person to think differently.  Another example is smoking and the question of is a person addicted to cigarettes after their first one, or second one?  The answer is no but that decision to smoke a third one could be the one that changes their minds and further the process.  See where I am going?  Do not take me wrong looking nice and dressing conservative is just as tempting as hardly covering your skin, it just does not let the public think that you are a follower instead of a leader when you “walk” differently.

How many things of the world do we either voluntarily or unknowingly allow into our lives that provide this jaded heart condition?  Most of us find things irrelevant or non provocative in manners that would have such an affect on our hearts, yet these things are presented to us each and every second of the day.  How long will it take until you begin to walk and talk as the world does?  What will it take you’re your mind to conform to the world’s thinking and begin to accept its ways.  It is those people that God wanted me to see and to look at as I sat there on that bench for approximately twenty minutes.  It was those people who at one time probably understood that God loved them and wanted them to have a different life than what the world had to offer, or they could have been in the category that has never heard God’s message to them but are so blind to God’s ways now that it would take a complete miracle for them to change their heart towards God.

It was those people that God sees as a field of ripe harvest and it also a field of His church people that are falling victim of the same lies that the ones who have never heard of the gospel are falling for.  Our enemy has done a fabulous job in hiding and masking the real truth about the world to all who have been alive on this earth.  What is most amazing is that we have voluntarily held open the doors to our hearts in order to be accepted and to have friends in the communities that we live in.  We have gone to great lengths to make ourselves popular and totally “hip” with today’s culture that our parents are doing the same activities as their children.

It is these hearts that God wanted me to see and for me to ask my own self if I am falling into that category of accepting the world as my own.  One must be pretty honest with themselves to accomplish this task because we all know that it is human nature to deliberately overlook things that might make us squirm or realize the truth, especially when the truth is staring back at you in your own mirror.

Now why would anyone intentionally wish to look for their impurities?  This is a concept that is foreign to the human in that it is a natural desire for the human to hide as much of their past and present as possible.  This is a normal process and to the mind a good concept, it limits what others can hold against you.  There is one problem with this however and that is it is difficult to open up about things when a true relationship begins to develop.  This is where God comes to the rescue.

All of us are aware that we cannot change our past even though we try to forget what we have done.  With all of the modern technological information available to the public, it serves as another reason to keep our minds, mouths and hearts shut to others.  But when we attempt to accomplish this process we actually place ourselves into a slavery condition and it is of the worst kind.  We are a slave to our past and it is a personal slavery since it is our life that we are placing into those chains.  We become so locked up within ourselves that it is basically impossible to have any type of true relationship so we begin the compromise stages of the heart to try and compensate for our own actions.  This is a procedure that our enemy uses to gain control of our foresight and our own hope in life and for many of us throughout the world it is an effective weapon to limit the relational ties with God.

It is not God’s desire to watch you make the choice of the world, for He understands what that choice will lead you into and what troubles it will cause within your life.  God has never promised anyone an easy road in life and this goes especially for those who choose Him over the world.  God loves you with all of His heart and it is a pure heart and a pure love and that is what He desires that you experience in life through Him.

So I ask you to examine your own heart.  Look at the ways of the world and then seek to find any of those traces within you.  If you find some do not be ashamed or scared of them but ask God to take them from you and to restore your clean heart once again.  This process will be painful at times but in the end it shall be worth every uncomfortable moment.  Then when you walk around the mall, school halls, or restaurants people will automatically know that you are not in step with this world and that you are different in every way possible.

Ask God to help you look in those areas that you fear and ask Him to take away all of the blinding factors that allow us alone to overlook.  He guarantees that He will not leave us during this process, He also guarantees a personal freedom from this blinders that cause so much inner paint and torment in our lives.  And additional perk to this process is that He will allow you to see the truth in what the world is trying to accomplish in your life and how devastating those concepts are to our hearts.  The most glorious thing about this process is that God will allow the restoration of your heart to occur as well and this brings spiritual freedom to your life in an extraordinary manner in which everyone will notice.






DLB