Religious Culture
As I’m reading Matthew 16:13-19 I can see that Christ knew that the people around us influence us greatly. He knew that public opinion would have a tremendous impact on us, and I wonder in your work place, in your neighborhood, wherever you spend most of your time, maybe inside your own home, who do people say that God is?
Our culture has an opinion but I’d like to suggest that we have to also be careful of the opinions of our religious culture. You and I have to understand that we are dealing with a religious culture of our day. And we’ve got to know what the religious culture is so that we will know when we’re buying into propaganda that is not what the Word of God says.
I’m just saying that we need to know the difference of what man is telling us in religious terms and what God is saying to us in His Word. When we stand before the throne of God and he says, “Why didn’t you believe me?”, we’re not going to be able to point to those that gave us propaganda. We cannot point back to all those other people and go “he’s why”, “she’s why”. God says, “Believe me.”
God says, “You called yourself a believer for 40 years and I kept waiting for you to live up to it.” Do we believe or don’t we? What are we getting, what is coming to us through our religious culture? Are we receiving truth? And what is propaganda and what do we want to dump? I’m not talking about dumping the people either.
I want to be real clear when I say, you and I get to choose, you and I get to choose what we’re going to buy. And you and I want to be people of God.
See, we have a lot of things going in our religious culture. Let’s be people that believe God because of what His Word says. Let’s not buy into propaganda that doesn’t line up with God’s Word.
Posted By: BEAR4BBC
"If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people." 
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4 comments:
for instance....oprah...she said on ntl tv this last week that she was raised christian and is stil christian. now at first i thought...."dang it. why does she have to say that." as far as others are concerned that don't know any better, well, those who do too. she is forming their opinion of Christianity. telling them that it's ok to live the life you want to and still "believe in God". i thought. how can she do that?doesn't she know better. doesn't she know that christian means "christ follower'? BUT then i thought, if she doesn't really believe that Christ was the son of God she could still call herself a christian cause she follows some of the teachings of someone she believes was a prophet. i don't know what she believes, but to me she is exactly the kind of person you are speaking of. just once, i'd love to have a sit down w/her. the other day when they were talking about "the secret" a lady in the audience asked if this secret has anything to do w/God cause she raises her kids to follow & have faith in God. they said that it definately has to do w/faith and God, but basically, it can be whatever God you believe in. Ridiculous. Anyway, that's a whole other post right? BUT it's just another thing calling itself religious, defining religion for our culture. Scary
word to you sister! i agree with your example. oprah, though i am a fan of the show and of the charity work she does, is a post-modern, God is not in us-we are in God, we have all the power within ourselves, more into spirituality than an active faith in God, kind of person. imagine if God got a hold of her heart.....imagine the influence to spread the TRUTH she would have? i wonder what God's true will for her life was supposed to be?
off the oprah wagon.....
our belief system is core. those of us who have been raised in church most of our lives should consider that part of our testimony a huge gift. but it comes with some baggage....we may have included some beliefs that do not exactly match up with God's word. those things may serve as good boundaries and preferences but not things to base everything we believe on.
it's always good to sift through the propaganda---get to the real "pearls" that hold up against the word of God. do some spriritual "spring cleaning". freedom people! the laws of man were not God's intent--we need to be effective for Christ---we need to continually exercise our faith--just like we would if we were training for a race or competition. get focused on the goal. get the blood flowing through it, push the limits, expect more of it next time, until we find ourselves in the "habit of dependency" on our God.
it's the road to living a satisfied, fulfilled, Christ-centered, and freeing life. that's what i want most.
AMEN SISTAS - Girls, I couldn't have said it better...so I won't try! ;)
You girls got it goin on. I find it interesting as I read a couple other blogs that are very theologically / philosophically heavy, how many people want to try and intellectualize God or define Him ultimately limiting His greatness. I know I am repeating myself here, but what Beth Moore said in her Re-building Walls study I think very much applies; "we should know Gods personality so well that when something is said in reference to Him it should resonate with us either wrong or right." Knowing Him that intimately can only come from knowing His word.
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