Whos line is it anyway?

I have felt in my heart to write about this for a while now... i know that timing is everything and I think that God has chosen this time for me to write down some thoughts about drawing those though lines in our lives.

I have been thinking about this for a while now and it has been nudging at my heart for a couple of weeks. I have had some time to think about it and the more I think about it the more passionate I get and the more convince I am about the dire need to draw borders and having the tough lines drawn out in our lives.

Let me start off by saying this... the more this world or society becomes liberal the more we look like radical conservatives. Not sure if you follow me on this. Basically what I am saying is that the more this world or this society is liberal or open to things that go against what we believe or against the word of God the more we are going to look and be labeled radical conservatives and narrow minded. The interesting thing is that this change happens in such a slow pace and in a very non-threating way that when you realize what occur you are either "open minded" to accept what society is doing or go against it and be "narrow minded".

I believe that this is the point where we need to stand firm and draw the line. I know that I suffered and still suffer from wanting NOT be looked as conservative, or narrow minded or old fashioned. I guess that is the equivalent of been called a nerd or geek or dweeb... and we all know that once you are labeled is hard to separate yourself from it.
That got me thinking about our lives and how much we are willing to compromise in order to fit in the right label. Most times we compromise without even knowing or giving it a second thought. I have this image of a person drawing a line in the dirt and constantly moving it back to accommodate things/people/habits that happen to appear.

"Everything is permissible for me"—but not everything is beneficial."
1 Cor. 6:12

Sometimes I think that we get blinded and up in arms about the things we believe we have a right to do because we are free to do them. We take on this air of martyrdom and and think some sort of injustice has been done if we are in any way shape or form deprived from this. We forget that with that freedom comes a responsibility to know and discern what is good and what is not good for us. We need to understand that even though we have freedom to do, say, live, think, feel the way we want to, not everything is going to benefit our physical and spiritual lives.

Here is where we draw lines.... here is where we need to swallow hard and be honest with ourselves and with God and either commit or continue to compromise.

I want to put it in a more practical sense. We have the freedom to do whatever we want, to go to clubs, to go dancing, to go to the movies, to stay up as late as we want, to drink (alcohol), to smoke, to over eat, to not eat, to have sex out of wedlock, to choose the friends we hang out with etc. etc. but how many of these things are we taking part in? and we feel that it's okay for us to do them? How many of us constantly compromise, shift our beliefs, cater to friends, cave to peer pressure when we are faced with a though decision? How many of us are really concern with what we see in the movies, the horror, the gore, the depravity that we subject to ourselves to in the name of entertainment? How many of us compromise or time and priorities to cater to friends? How many of us are more committed to work than to reading the word of God? How many of us split hairs about drinking if we don't we drunk? or smoking because we just can't seem to kick the habit? Besides the Bible does not clearly states that we should not smoke.

This precious freedom that we are talking about here has a huge bearing on our spiritual lives. What places you go to... the people that you hang out with, the type of things you see and hear all have a direct bearing on your spirit. We sometimes neglect to remember that we are fighting a spiritual battle...

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly realms.
Ephesians. 6:12

Just cause we are believers does not mean that we are far away from the front lines. On the contrary we are the front line. We are in the battle! If we don't know where we stand, if we don't draw our boundaries, if we don't commit to the good fight then we are bound to loose ground and compromise our spiritual lives. I beg of you, not to over look this. I plead not to take this with a grain of salt. This is vital for our having and abundant life with God. This is important for you to always keep in your mind.

I know that right now some that might be reading this might say "Oh please... you sound like my dad. I can't do the things that I like to do" Or "You sound like a conservative. This is soooo boring". Some of you might even be thinking "You ain't perfect. Who are you to judge me!". All I can say is that if we don't know where we stand with God, we will fall for anything. If we don't draw lines and boundaries in our lives, we will always be in retreat. If we don't commit our everything to God then we will compromise our spiritual lives every time. This goes beyond something to do... this has everything to do with life.

Where have you drawn your line?