Fitting in is not a Badge of Honor

Have you ever wondered why you don't seem to fit into any group?

There is always an initiation fee in joining groups and that fee is the total loss of your own values and beliefs to be accepted into that group.

Most gatherings have defined themselves by the thinking of the leader of that group rather than by the principles of Christ.

Born-again believers who are strong and honest are rarely accepted by groups. They speak of the Word of God more than they speak of human teachers and they challenge everything according to the Word of God.

The first thing that comes to mind in every situation for the born-again believer is a principle of God. Their mind has been shaped by their continual reading of the Bible and the promptings of the Holy Spirit, in short, they do not think like the world.

1 Corinthians 2:14 "But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

Many things "Christians" say and do today have no basis in Scripture, they are the traditions of men. Once a person has been convinced of the wrong thinking it is very difficult to convince them of the truth. They tend to hang onto whatever is familiar or what justifies their wrong thinking.

May we obey God in "questioning all things" so that we may cleanse our minds of those things we were taught that were not of God and replace them with the mind of Christ.

James 4:7-9 "7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom.…"

When the focus of a culture is to be happy as much as possible the culture will never see things in truth. They will ignore the things that need fixing and embrace what they like.

Someone once asked me why people accuse them of being negative when they are just exposing something to help.

My answer was that we are seen as negative but we talk more about the broken things because the good does not need fixing. Talking about happy things all the time doesn't fix anything, it merely sweeps the dirt under the rug so they don't have to look at it. This "positive mindset" is selfish and very often enabling without a solution.

A culture that thrives on God's Word and is filled with gratitude toward Him would be more interested in solutions and exposing evil to remove it, would be more joyful than the one that pretends everything is alright.

Isaiah 58:2

"For day after day they seek Me and delight to know My ways, like a nation that does what is right and does not forsake the justice of their God. They ask Me for righteous judgments; they delight in the nearness of God."