Do Not Be Conformed to This World

Do Not Be Conformed to This World

"Don't let the world around you squeeze you into it's mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity." Romans 12:2 (Phillips Translation)

I have told you before that I battle in my mind and heart the concept of imitating the culture in order to reach people with the Gospel. I am becoming increasingly convinced that we possibly cross a dangerous line in the steps we take to reach people for the kingdom.

I have often said that I am most upset with the trendsetters who years out predict what people will want and expect. We tend to buy into their thinking, and before we know it, we end up tailoring our programs and outreach only to find that those fads and trends quickly fade because the trends have shifted in another direction.

There are some bright lights -- some men and women that are taking a stand. One young man is the grandson of Dr. Billy Graham, Tullian Tchividjian, the successor to the late Dr. D. James Kennedy's church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

In a recent Christianity Today article about Tullian, he states, "Younger generations don't want trendy engagement from the church; in fact they're suspicious of it ... Instead they want truthful engagement with historical and theological solidity that enables meaningful interaction with transcendent reality. They want desperately to invest their life in something worth dying for, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow find."

Tullian pastored New City Church prior to taking over Coral Ridge, and he said, "If you want your friends to know New City, come and watch her worship her Lord. You'll know much more about us when you see the God we worship and how we respond to him in worship than if you were to come and the kids get their faces painted."

I think it is important for us to remember that in trying to reach the culture too often we have tried to initiate them to the point of our undoing. Paul exhorts the church at Roman to "not allow the world around you (the culture) to squeeze you into its mold."

I would encourage you to step back and ask yourself the question, "Am I being squeezed in the wrong mold?" The world is starved for answers. I believe God's WORD still has those answers. While some believe that truth isn't truth any more, and that stories are more important than precepts, we at America's KESWICK are committed to teaching the truth from God's WORD. For a complete list of Bible teachers who will be on campus this summer, please visit our website: www.americaskeswick.org. -- Bill Welte is President and CEO of America's KESWICK

God's WORD for YOU: Proverbs 2; 2 Kings 12-13; Luke 22:1-30

Great Quote: The most authentic witnesses of any man's character are those who know him in his own family, and see him without any restraint or rule of conduct, but such as he voluntarily prescribes to himself. If a man carries virtue with him into his private apartments, and takes no advantage of unlimited power or probable secrecy; if we trace him through the round of time, and find that his character, with those allowances which mortal frailty must always want, is uniform and regular, we have all the evidence of his sincerity that one man can have with regard to another; and, indeed, as hypocrisy cannot be its own reward, we may, without hesitation, determine that his heart is pure. Samuel Johnson