WEEK ONE: REDEEMING CULTURE

How do you decide what is good and right for you personally?

Todd Marinovich was destined for NFL greatness. From the crib he had been primed by his father to be a quarterback. Sports Illustrated once wrote, “He has never eaten a Big Mac or an Oreo or a Ding Dong. When he went to birthday parties as a kid, he would take his own cake and ice cream to avoid sugar and refined white flour. He would eat homemade catsup, prepared with honey. He did consume beef but not the kind injected with hormones. He ate only unprocessed dairy products. He teethed on frozen kidney and liver.” (February 1988) He was referred to as “Robo QB” by another magazine. He seemingly had everything going for him. Unfortunately, after he got out from under his father’s hand, drugs and drug addiction became his downfall… and the once promising “can’t miss” quarterback never lived up to the expectations. What should have been a storybook ending came crashing down once the process was compromised.

So, what are you consuming that can compromise your story? What are you taking in that has the potential to kill your soul? There are so many things every day that have the potential to destroy us. Our consumption choices shape our thoughts. Then thoughts can become behaviors and behaviors become habits, and before you know it, you’re stuck. But the apostle Paul gives us the antidote in his writing to the Romans.

In Romans 12:1-2 he writes, “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.” (The Message) In another version, it says we should allow God to transform us by changing the way we think. This idea of transformation is the idea of reshaping who we are into who God wants us to become. This requires a renewing of our minds, allowing us to test and prove God’s will.

Here’s the reality: we will be shaped by heaven or we will be pressured by the world. Many things, ideas, practices, and options will be thrown at us. Some will be godly—embrace those. Some will be ungodly—reject those. But for those things that are somewhere in the middle, ask God to help you know what to do. And if it is possible, use those things to reach people for Jesus.