Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – I am so often unaware of who I am serving. I allow my life to be shaped by a culture that constantly fails me, yet I bow down.
2 Timothy 3:1 TPT
[1] But you need to be aware that in the final days, the culture of society will become extremely fierce and difficult for the people of God.
Observation
The culture surrounds me, invisible but powerfully present. Its influence is easy to see when I stop long enough to allow personal awareness to have voice. But its power is not felt as much as seen in my shaping stories. In my world, the West, it’s consumerism and capitalism. It invades us as we look for significance, worth and security in their prevailing stories. We rape the earth as we serve it, we compete and compare and trample each other in its service, and we elevate self at all costs as we follow blindly its demands. We chase its extremes while standing by as others are crushed in its wake. It’s extremely fierce in its treatment of me, even when I am apparently successful in its service, yet I bow and blindly follow.
The first call is “be aware.” God did not come to save me to himself, as her singular focus, he came to restore humanity and reign the earth. A new humanity, restored to his image, my truest self, living in a new story, his story, his kingdom, his ways. I so often accept the wonderful gift of personal salvation without being aware of the fuller story of new creation, new earth, to which I am saved to serve. I feel so small in this story that I often resign any posture for impact. I sing my songs and read his stories, but I run with the bulls of culture, for who can stand against the stampede? I am deceived in my resignation and I need to allow my intimacy with the king to lead me to awareness of the culture and my posture for influence. I am not responsible for cultural revolution, I am responsible for my stand against the tide.
As our families, our mental health, our joy and hope, our spiritual energy, our source and stories of strength and meaning, all fade as we serve our cultural stories, even as their promises are proven to be failing and unsustainable and unobtainable, there may be the possibility of an awareness awakening. We may ask “is there another way?” And possibly we will find it has been inviting us for thousands of years into what we have unsuccessfully tried to create ourselves – life in its fullness.
Application
Be aware. I will be aware of the presence of her presence to lead me into an awareness of the extremely fierce culture in which I live and how to walk in a new direction. I will not allow the stampede to be the driver of my stories, but her beautiful voice and upside down ways she builds the new world upon.
Response
Thank you that you don’t stand in harsh judgement of my laziness and rejection of your ways. I love that you love me when I walk out on your call. Your intimacy never fails, for this is the only place of awareness. Thank you that you call me into new stories of a more abundant life. Stories that seem so impractical and impossible in the face of the stories of my culture, but ring so beautifully true when walked. I love life lived with you in your ways.
Meditation
Meditate – be aware of the culture.
Consider:
Where is the culture influencing me to live in a way that is contrary to kingdom life?
Why does the culture of the day hold sway over me?
JOURNEY DEEPER
