LINES

For me, today school has officially began again and summer is now over. (sniff)
As I looked back on my busy summer I found an interesting isue that I thought was worth blogging. To better understand my thinking you need to hear about my personal summer.

This summer, I got my first job (imagine that! at the age of 18). My awesome friend, Nathan Eikenberry, got me a job where he works painting and cleaning dorm rooms and moving students in. God is awesome! This job was ideal for me! I got to spend time with a bunch of growing Christians, non-Christians, and weak Christians in a hot, humid, not air conditioned dorm. We spent many hours working hard, sweating, and stinking up the place together with our BO.

When I say "weak Christians" I'm probably being judgmental, but in my observance of their actions I find that it's very hard to say that they are serius about and growing in their relationship with God. They say they are saved and they go to church but there is something different about the way they view life and the way I think it should be viewed. The main thing that stood out to me was how they were constantly pushing what I thought was the moral and immoral devider line. They listened to music that I thought was pushing it. They talked in flirtatious ways that I thought was pushing it. They touched each other in ways I thought was pushing it. Being around them just made me wonder what encourages them walk the railing? Do the crashing waves of consequence below not intimidate them?

I suppouse I feel more intimidated by those waves because of the way I've been raised. My parents have always made the consequences of disobedience and rebelion severe enough to make me never want to do it again. I slowly learned to stay away from the line. In our minds we develope the theory that there is a line we must not cross in order keep our relationship with Him in tact. The question we as humans tend to ask is, "Where is the line? How far can I go before I'm in sin?" And we ask this so that later we can walk over to it and see how far it goes. Our flesh desires the other side of the fence. Our flesh wants to be as close to the other side as it can be. The problem with doing this is that we can easily fall over the edge and into the sea of sin if we aren't careful.

Eventually I realized that not only do my friends need to find the answer to this problem but so do I! I often find my self just like that one guy on the Virizon comercial saying on the cell phone, "Am I sinning now? Good. Am I sinning now? Good." There is no way this is real devotion to my God! In Hosea 6:6 God says, "I do not want your sacrifices--I want your love; I do not want your offerings--I want you to know me." God is saying that it's not all about doing the right thing, it's about getting close to God! If we make that our focus than we will do the right thing! Our relationship with God is so much more than seeing how much fun we can have without crossing the line! Let's not dwell on the railing! Let's dwell in God!

I could take more time and write a lot more about this topic but I think it would be awesome to make my blog a discussion center! If you guys have anything to add on to this--for or against my posistion--give it to me and maybe we'll grow in our walk with God together!