Television has long been paraded as the poster-child of inappropriate viewing for small children. Only certain channels are cleared for "all ages" and most come with disclaimers saying that parental discretion is advised. This has always struck me as a type of oxymoron. We try to instill in our children the values and traditions we have learned from the Bible, yet for greater than half their life we are more than willing to set them before something that continually tries to defeat the very morals we work so hard to teach. In effect we [Christians] are a nation divided, we try to walk the fine-gray-line between a holy life and the ways of the world. We hope that in all of this we can enjoy the pleasures of sin for their season as well as taste of the heavenly gift of God. In the life of a Christian, however, there is no middle ground: we are either for him or against him [Luke 11:23].
The Bible tells us that there is no darkness in God; he is the pure and holy light. Being the image of God to this world, we are literally the visible example of who and what Jesus Christ is. If we show the wrong example then we are preaching another Jesus. In doing this we present the world with a false hope and in the end we sentence them to the burning fires of Hell for eternity. Why? Because we didn't surrender our whole minds and bodies to the great commission.
This is not a small matter in our lives. In so many ways we deny the Lord with our living. We watch shows that degrade, demoralize, and demonize those things which are good. We readily agree that what is evil is the source of the greatest pleasures. We seek to find happiness and comfort from something other than our great God. In life we are not called to be rich . . . to be happy . . . to be respected . . . or any other thing we may think! We are simply called to be FAITHFUL. We must realize that we are not our own, but bought with a price. We are no longer yielding ourselves to the will of sin, but are surrendered to the desires and lust of God's Holy Spirit. We are bone of HIS bone, flesh of HIS flesh. The very fabric of our lives are immersed in the blood of HIS perfect sacrifice. It is this revelation that we must submit to: The knowledge that no longer do we live for ourselves, but unto God who created us and ransomed us back from himself; who being in the image of a man gathered into one perfect man all who would believe on him.
Let us therefore "lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Heb. 12:1-2) We must walk everyday and every moment of our lives for and unto God. We cannot allow the world to see an impure light emitting from our conversations. Blurring the lines between holiness and worldly affections is simply not an option. We must take hold of the promise that Christ secured for us that day in when he prayed "the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." (John 17:22,23) |
