What do you do when God stirs up something so strong in your heart, you think you are going to bust?  This is a particularly perplexing issue for someone that is so easily distracted.  Occasionally for me, I am able to channel enough focus in one direction that I am able to do something halfway meaningful with it, which is one of the reasons I love preaching, teaching, blogging, etc. – it forces me to focus!

These past few months I have been praying on and studying Romans 12, but there is a great study by Chip Ingram called Living on the Edge that I have particularly enjoyed these past few weeks that have really challenged me to think through where I need to work on “not conforming to the patterns of this world.”

For example, the pattern of this world is to simply ignore issues relating to something as basic as how we define marriage.  You know what the issues are; we are surrounded by them every day.  What do you do with that?  I’ve always believed it is better to let the light of Christ shine on an issue rather than curse the darkness, but what happens when the light doesn’t seem to bring about my desired outcome.

If I am doing everything I can reasonably think of about something disturbing, and others are doing the same, what are we to make of the fact that we still have disturbing outcomes? Well, here is what I came up with this morning. God is God, and I am not, and things will go down just as He has planned them.

This is probably the conclusion Paul had come to when he penned Romans 1:25-26, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…  because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones!”

Okay, so I am not supposed to be surprised by the things I see going on around me, after all, Satan is over this world.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and there are some simple things I can do to fight it.  For example, I can send an email/letter to my legislators pleading with them to defend marriage between a man and woman as God designed it.  I did that this morning, and so can you.  Check out this link: http://tinyurl.com/4e7ndng

In the end, I will continue to do my part while knowing and trusting that God is in control.  I think that is the way God wants it.  I also trust that He will continue showing me areas of my life that His light needs to shine into, and am so grateful for the hope that we have in Christ!