Habituated to the World

Sometimes I can be so oblivious to how encapsulated I am in the world that surrounds me.  I don't even realize the ways I think, speak, and act are all influenced by this tainted society.  I have become desensitized to so much that should make me cringe.  Many lyrics in songs, scenes in movies, and activities that my friends partake in for some reason just seem "normal" to me.  Maybe part of this is because I grew up learning the ways of the world, before I knew Christ.  But maybe each one of us feels a little enslaved to the world.  Living in this world but not becoming part of it is the most difficult task, because it can consume us so easily.

After the Israelites were brought out of slavery in Egypt, they complained that they wish they were back in Egypt because they missed the food that they had while there.  Exodus 16: 3 says:  The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

I think those things all the time.  I know how miserable I was before coming to know Christ, and yet I sometimes can be jealous of the people that can do anything they want with no sense of guilt... as absurd as that sounds!  Though I obviously don't want to be enslaved again, I sometimes crave the "perks"-- the instant gratifications-- that being enslaved offers.

But I think the point is that I still am enslaved to sin!  I am just like the Israelites because my entire thought process is backwards.  I am so affected by this world and by the lusts of it.  My identity since birth (until a little over a year ago, anyway) was built on the world, and so it has become stitched into me.  I can't just sit here and complain and say, "Oh well, I'll never be pure like my friends that were raised Christian." NO. I need to do something about it.

Step one is obviously praying about it. But step two?  I need to cleanse myself of this world (as much as possible while still living in it, of course).  I need to slowly take a needle and take out those wrongly stitched pieces.  And yes, this process will be long and aggravating.  I mean, when you mess up isn't taking the wrong stitch out always more annoying than putting a new stitch in?  When I accepted Christ I took out some of the wrong stitches, but mostly I just added all the new right ones.  I need to backtrack now and finish the job of weeding out the ways the world has affected me.  If I change my thought process, then my actions will change with it.

The first few things on my to-do list are to stop listening to dirty songs and watching inappropriate TV shows.  Right now those things only make me crave the "perks" of being enslaved, just like the Israelites.  I need to do this until I no longer feel numb to those stimuli.  Until my thought processes change.  Until my stitchings are only that of which God has sewn.