Conform

September 8, 2008 – 10:15 am

Voices.

 

I hear voices all the time.

 

No, I’m not losing my mind. But the voices sometimes push me to a place where I think I might go crazy.

 

Voices that say "conform to the norms. Otherwise people will think you’re odd, crazy, cranky." Maybe it’s my age as I’m passing midlife. I’m not interested in saying what pleases people or behaving so that they’re happy. I’m not one to do things because it’s what everyone expects. Their understanding of what I should be doing, and when, does not sit well with me.

 

It’s been this way forever. It’s not unique to me though. You’re pressured by voices. It’s called peer pressure. School just started up a few days ago and kids are running crazy to get the latest fads and styles, whether clothes, hairstyles or the most recent gagets. God forbid someone should show up with a little originality and decide "I’m going to look this way and behave this way because it works for me and it speaks of who I am." There are a few of you who live like that - YOU ROCK! There are many of us who want to but the pressure is strong and it’s hard…and lonely… I’m not blaming you. My heart goes out to you. I know what it feels like.

 

Church says we must conform, society says we must conform, organizations demand conformity and on it goes. Speaking of churches, denominations basically look the same, sing the same hymns, emphasize the same priorities, run the same programs and even build their buildings similar to the others of their stream. Rick Warren want-a-bees are everywhere (though Rick Warren would be the first to advise against copying them).

 

God said something about conformity through his man Paul. He tells me how I am to respond to the pressure to conform. He said, "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." (Romans 12:1-2, The Message)

 

I want to conform to one thing in life - what God wants for me, from me. I know that’s risky. And hard. People won’t like me as well when I won’t do and behave the way they expect me to. I’ll spend more time alone with my ideals and philosophies than I’ll have friends. That’s the hard part. I don’t want that. You don’t either. But the alternative is not  exciting - living in a bubble with thousands of others who are working hard trying to make everybody else happy while ignoring the most important One.

 

Join me in a prayer.

 

"Lord, this week I want to know what it means to be completely influenced by you and detached from the influence of the world. While in the world, I do not want to be of the world. I know I must be insulated from but not isolated in, the world I live. I also realize that the world has a tendency to even squeeze the church into its way of living, thinking and behaving and sometimes the pressure from the world comes through the church. I resolve to know one priority this week - what you want; to determine that the only thing that matters is what you have to say and where you lead me. Give me courage to follow you."

 

Pay attention to The Voice - and let’s see where we end up.