Holiness
This is a topic that I have just been thinking about and dealing with myself lately. How far are we called to go to be holy? Last night Randy and Brayden and Lyndon, Jordan and I went to Randy's to watch Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. It was really funny and good time spent with friends. But after I got to wondering, how can 5 christian friends come to the place where we laugh and enjoy sacrilege, and even laugh and enjoy the offensiveness of immorality. How far do we seperate ourselves? What can God redeem and what should we avoid? What should we let in and what should we keep out?
I found myself wondering why this semester I don't have many friends at school, just some really good ones. Usually there was a lot of people I could hang out with. But I guess I've started to walk away when conversations turn gross. Not laugh when i always used to. Be less enjoyable to be around because even when i try not to sometimes I grimace when people swear or make take my Lord's name in vain. Have I gone too far? When I look to Jesus people either loved him or hated him. Because he was willing to confront sin, but also accept the sinner and offer forgiveness. But to those who denied the gift of God and tried to get others to do the same he had nothing but harsh condemnation.
I know that too often we have sat by and let the world go to hell. I've watched some of my friends fall away from God and I was sad, or even prayed for them but have never been bold enough to confront it. In high school my dad dad took a guy in youth group aside who was falling away and talked to him about it and the guy was amazed that anybody cared enough to take a stand against what he was doing. He turned right around and is a good pastor today. When should we as christians confront sin and when should we let it continue?
Haha I know this blog has been kind of silly lately and I am sorry for changing the mood but this is something that has just been on my heart lately and I want to figure it out. Should we be asking ourselves, How holy can we be? or else how relevant can we get with the world? I'm just trying to figure this out right now for myself, I would love to hear what you guys think.
I found myself wondering why this semester I don't have many friends at school, just some really good ones. Usually there was a lot of people I could hang out with. But I guess I've started to walk away when conversations turn gross. Not laugh when i always used to. Be less enjoyable to be around because even when i try not to sometimes I grimace when people swear or make take my Lord's name in vain. Have I gone too far? When I look to Jesus people either loved him or hated him. Because he was willing to confront sin, but also accept the sinner and offer forgiveness. But to those who denied the gift of God and tried to get others to do the same he had nothing but harsh condemnation.
I know that too often we have sat by and let the world go to hell. I've watched some of my friends fall away from God and I was sad, or even prayed for them but have never been bold enough to confront it. In high school my dad dad took a guy in youth group aside who was falling away and talked to him about it and the guy was amazed that anybody cared enough to take a stand against what he was doing. He turned right around and is a good pastor today. When should we as christians confront sin and when should we let it continue?
Haha I know this blog has been kind of silly lately and I am sorry for changing the mood but this is something that has just been on my heart lately and I want to figure it out. Should we be asking ourselves, How holy can we be? or else how relevant can we get with the world? I'm just trying to figure this out right now for myself, I would love to hear what you guys think.
posted by davidh at 3:26 PM
7 Comments:
It's good to know you still get to thinking...even when sometimes it almost seems too late! To be honest, I wonder about most of the stuff you talked about, quite a bit! Like you, I often make mistakes and apparently make some of the wrong choices...after all, we're only human! But I don't think we should let that fact (being human) excuse us from doing what we do! I know I have been quite often watching how I act, in relevance to others! I don't excactly know what I'm getting at, but I've got to go pretty quickly, now! I think we should try the best as being as holy as we can, but that doesn't come without the grace God has given us! And if there's one thing I know, it's that we need God's hand guiding us, even in some of the situations we consider to be smaller or less significant! Personally, I have been trying to work on this even more! I find that praying at the beginning of the day for God to fill me with the Holy Spirit, I often have a very different view of what I should do and how I should act! Anyways...I'm not sure if that's the question you had, but that's what's going on in my heart! And I've got to go for supper! So I'll see you on Friday! (I can't make it Wednesday, which really sucks! I really enjoy Youth Group...but I'm in Saskatoon, with some other jazz groups in the school! Should be fun times!) See you!
hey guys! i totally agree with Dave. i think we as a youth group really need to watch what kind of movies we watch or what conversations we get into...and whether or not they're building us up or not. with the movie thing, we should be expecally careful becouse there might be non christians there or not as strong christians...but even so, we should always be striving to be holy.
some very good points Dave. I've been thinking about some of that a lot lately too, and to hear/see that someone else thinking about it too is just really encouraging, knowing that i'm not alone. But it also just shows that we really need to take these sort of things into perspective and be thinking about them! I'm glad we had this conversation!
congrats Amiee! you have the hugest blog EVER!! but i totally agree with you! thanx a lot everyone for their input.
oh wow, you girls are incredible! thanks so much for your input. I hope some guys might comment. Yeah Aimee putting on the armor of God every day is such a good thing, a good reminder of what's important and even the promises of God. Did you write out that whole prayer or did you get it from a site? because it sounds like that is your daily prayer and that is amazing. I remember at Street Invaders we did that as a team and it was a really good time. I think I might do it more often.
Yeah Robbie and I got together last night and we spent about 3 and a half hours in the park in front of my house in prayer and then in worship. It was such a beautiful powerful time. I can't believe how often I forget how good it is to spend time with God. And put it off for other things that are nowwhere near as good. But that time really cleared up that issue for me. Also i listened to this song/sermon thing that was really good. Check it out here
http://www.fireonthealtar.com/eye/Psalm%20101.mp3
Anyways yeah, from now on I'm going to try my best to keep what I'm letting come in stay pure and Godhonouring. And to only dwell on things like Philipians 4:8. And please hold me to this guys, like if at youth we are laughing about something that happened in a bad movie or show. Or if the guys are whispering to each other usually it's because we don't want to be slapped although sometimes it's just to annoy melinda because she doesn't like whispering. Or even if we bring back a movie that you guys think doesn't honor God, let's all have the courage to say "No, that's no good, let's either get a different one or just talk"
But yeah, thanks for the input you guys. Let's encourage each other in this. God bless you guys!
-david
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Matthew 6:22-23
Hahaha! First of all, I really like your idea Sarah!
Secondly, I totally agree with everything said already. (Sorry I didn't post earlier, I really haven't been on this page for at least a week, and I still don't even know when this blog was posted.)
Thirdly, I find it really funny how so many of us have been "thinking about the same thing lately", because I also have been thinking about holiness this past week. Personally I've never really liked the whole movie watching thing to begin with. I mean, every once in a while a movie is fine (if it's a good movie), but when the only thing we do to socialize is watching movies after youth - we have a huge problem.
And it is a problem, because we really need more ideas (like Sarah's ) about what we can do after youth, or really any time.
Movies are a huge problem - they are a complete waste of time (unless they are educational, or maybe, really funny). Also, we run into problems like watching stuff we know we(as Christians), should not be watching. Too many times we decide that if 95% of a movie is "ok" and the other 5% is bad, then those who have seen the movie before will just tell the other people to turn their heads when the 5% is happening. No, it shouldn't work that way. Why do we do that? If 5% of a movie is bad enough that we shouldn't see it , we shouldn't be watching the movie at all.
One of the things I've been thinking about lately, is how I'm going to raise my kids when I grow up. I think I've come to the point where I've decided that I am going to have to either not met my kids watch movies, or be very careful as to which movies I let them watch. That's how bad I think movies are - and they're only going to get worse. (I feel pretty bad because I know that my parents, have given me and my sister numerous talks about this issue, yet we still haven't changed much.( I also know my parents are not the only ones upset about this issue)
One of my friends from school goes to a really conservative church - he's a really cool guy. He doesn't even have a TV in his house, and he never watches movies. I know he doesn't miss them at all. On the same point, I've been pretty busy lately, so I haven't watched more than 5-6 hours of TV this whole last month (excluding any movies), and I know I haven't missed TV at all either. Guys, I think we can do without movies.
HAHA, that last sentence probably scared some of you - but should it?
THINK ABOUT IT.
I know that sentence scares me, because I love watching movies. And I'm not saying that we should never watch any movies again, because there are some really good movies out there. But guys, we shouldn't hesitate to cut movies out of our lives if they are harmful to us as Christians. And we do need to stop watching (at least the bad movies) because they are harmful to us as Christians.
WOAHHH! THIS GETTING WAY TO LONG.
We as Christians are to be “in the World, but not of the World”. I think where we need to draw the line with movies is when the movies promote sin in our lives, or when they dull our sensitivity to when others (or the people in the movies are sinning). When movies are harmful to us as Christians, we should not be watching them.
man, this is such a good topic, i mean, if we are christians and are watching bad or inappropriate movies, then who is there to set the example for non-christians? it's just making them think less of sin, and think that if we do it, then it must be o.k., which really makes me feel bad, because we're not at all living for christ in this way. if we're doing inappropriate things with youth group friends, then that makes me think about how we act around non-christians too. the world is messed up enough as it is, and if we don't start changing now, then the future doesn't look too good. i also worry about how my kids are going to grow up, because there are already such bad influences in the world, and there are only going to be more, and worse ones. when jesus was living, they had no tv, no internet, no radio, and religion was soo important to them. i think we should try going without tv, and/or movies, because mindless entertainment has become too big of a focus in our lives. we should be spending more time on what's important. like aimee said, our eyes are the lamps of our body, and we should keep them bright instead of putting out the light (hey, that rhymes!). anywho, the end.
ok bye.
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