I'm starting this post of with a verse in the Message translation:




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 12:2 MSG

Now these past couple weeks at the University of Idaho have been pretty stressful. Schoolwork, exams, normal life things...everything was getting to me. Of course I know I should trust God completely, but actually doing it was a whole different matter. After a tough night of seemingly impossible homework, God came through for me once again. No shocker there huh? I could breathe a huge sigh of relief and all that was left to say was "Wow, thank you Lord!"

So where does tie into this verse? Well, we all get accustomed to living the way we want to, the convenient way. We take advantage of the little things that God does in our lives, even when we aren't giving Him much. I have been terribly guilty of this. This world that we live in does have some pretty fun, exciting, awesome stuff...but all of that doesn't compare to what God has for us. We tend to get into a routine of just going with the flow. My issue has been that I am a "strong Christian." My attitude is then "well if I do this one thing(whatever that may be) then I'm still fine cause I've already established my faith, I can just keep skating by with ok." That is ridiculous! God can't be our second option, the one we fall back on, our emergency break. Now granted He is always there for us when we sin, but that's not what I'm contending right now. I'm saying that we can't go out, live one way, then convince ourselves we are living another. Double-standards have no place here. This verse says offer everything to Him: work, school, eating, sleeping, walking around, everything! One aspect of our lives can't be right with him while we knowingly live another aspect the total opposite way. It also says don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you merely fit into it without even thinking. This means we can't just let the stuff we see everyday become acceptable. Whether it be bullying, wild partying abortions, cheating, or even discrimination, we can't just walk by it and say yeah, I know it's wrong, but hey it's a part of our society. This mentality is exactly what needs to change. Our projections of the perfect body, the perfect amount of money, or the perfect house must be torn down. No more letting this worldly crap get into our way of thinking. No more living one way, then acting another come Sunday morning. God is waiting for us to turn to Him fully so that He can lay out his awesome plans for us! I know I want to be more like Christ, and I know that He can change me! By simply giving up worldly stuff, stuff that won't last and really has no true meaning, I can shape my life to be one that others look up to. My goal from all this is that I can live in such a way that my peers can look at me and see my light shine and say I want what she has! God is simply waiting for us! How about giving up whatever is holding you back from fully committing to Him, and saying "I'm ready to give you EVERYTHING. I'm ready to stand up for what's morally right in this world and not simply accept it. I'm ready to see what awesome plans you have for my life and live them out in a way that witnesses to others!" To God be ALL the glory.