What in your life, culture, and mindset is normal and habitual? Are they good things or bad?

There are good things and bad in the ways we were brought up and to what we were exposed. The Israelites also had good and bad things in their upbringing and exposure, evidenced when they started to turn away from the Lord. When they stopped seeking the Lord first and ignored what they did not want to hear, they began to accept little things that made them feel good or seemed more logical. We see where they ended up and are horrified by the things they did that eventually led to captivity. It all starts somewhere.

God has been revealing things to me lately, things I have been believing for a very long time, that have been ever so slightly (or far from slightly) taking me off the path of holiness. I think we will not really see how far mindsets take us until we are far removed from them and can look back on our progress.

I think a lot of times you can look at someone from a movie, book, or those around you and think they are terrible people. You can look and say they are a murderer or self-absorbed or a bully right away, but you don’t know or see how they got to where they are. How do you know that the little grudge you’re holding — saying you are right and justified even to do so — is not the same that festered in them? Or how do you know that your mindset that keeps you feeling like a porcupine every time someone says something you don’t like is not the same one that they had? It is easy to point at the end results and see it clearly as wrong, but it is not so easy to see when it is an early thought.

Philippians 2:5-11
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

1 John 3:15
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

Luke 6:44-45
For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.  A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Have you every really considered what in your culture is Godly and beautiful and what is not? What have you been taught by your family? What are your perspectives? Are they Biblical or are they actually leading you down dangerous paths?

My challenge for you this week is that you really take these questions to God; ask him to change your heart and mind. Please tell us in the comments if there is anything God has already shown you in this way. We would love to hear what God has been teaching you.

Psalm139:23-24
Search me, o God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.