We live in a time and a culture where we as a society have a decreased dependency on God. We don’t necessarily need God to meet our everyday needs. Most of us have never had to wonder about where our next meal was going to come from or whether or not we would have a place to sleep that night. As a result, it’s much easier for us to focus on ourselves and to have a limited awareness of God and the fact that he is present in our lives. We are the center of our own universe. Since we are unaware of God, it becomes much more difficult to see Him and to see what it means to live for Him and through Him. Our picture of what it means to even know God can become very muddy.
Our focus is often on the wrong things or even worse yet, much of the time we don’t even have any focus. We have no direction. We are just floating around with no reason, no purpose.
Most people that have no reason or purpose are usually the ones that end up just following the crowd because they don’t have any direction of their own.
(Romans 12:2) Jesus says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.”
In other words, DON’T FOLLOW THE CROWD! Just because it seems like everybody else is doing it, doesn’t meant that we should do it.
Sometimes our natural inclination is to follow the crowd. I guess we just think that if this big group of people is going in this direction then they must be moving towards something. There must be something great over here since ALL of these people are going in this direction.
God knows us. He knows that we are insecure and that, when given the choice, we are probably going to follow the crowd. But what we take for granted is that the crowd isn’t always moving towards something. In fact, many times the crowd is just a bunch of insecure, scared and selfish people, who have no clue where they are going or why.
“Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
We avoid following the crowd when we change the structure of ourselves. As we go through life, who we become is shaped by our environments- by those around us. A lot of times we are taught unhealthy and inaccurate behaviors or ideas. Sometimes we need to un-learn and then re-learn things.
In order for us to renew our minds (un-learn and then re-learn), we have to deconstruct our perceptions. Our perceptions are what shape the lens through which we view the world and if our perceptions are incorrect, there is a pretty good chance that our view of the world is incorrect.
So if we choose not to follow the crowd and un-learn and then re-learn, the mud will be cleared from our eyes and “we will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
