Devotions

 MAKE UP YOUR MIND – IN OR OUT

When I was growing up it seemed like every house I would go in had a wooden screen door.  I liked them.  They didn’t really close, they banged.  The adults would always yell – don’t bang the door but I couldn’t hear them because the door was banging.  Then us kids would come back in for a drink of water just a few minutes later and our parents would say – make up your mind – in or out.  We never made up our minds.  For me anyway, it was always in and out. 

The Bible is not silent on this point.  Faithful Christians approach moral decisions with an assumption that there is right and wrong, with God’s word as the standard.  But maintaining the biblical standard for Christians doesn’t require isolation.  We are most certainly in the world even though we are not of the world.

The Bible teaches it’s okay to be in the world if you don’t let the world get into you.  Christians have duel citizenship, guided by their first loyalties to Christ, but living in a real world with it’s own standards and expectations.  So we are both in and out and it can be a tough position to be in.  I will pray for you and you pray for me that we have the strength to live in two worlds so different from one another.  Because for us believers it’s both in and out.