Life in a Shadow

It looms over me every day, more threatening than I realize. I actually don't even mind it. I follow where it leads, I go where it goes. I feel better about myself when I fit into it's mold.

Yet it has the power to destroy me.

Peer pressure.

I would like to say that I'm immune to it. That nobody can make me do anything. That I'm completely comfortable with who I am. BUT...

It is the shrine to which I devote a horrifying amount of my time.

Do I really care about the latest movies? Aside from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the answer would be "Not a whit." But I know most of the movies that will be releasing in the next couple of months. I know who acts in them and what those actors have acted in before. Why?

Peer pressure.

I want to have something to offer when my friends talk about stuff. For crying out loud, I say movie quote from movies I will never watch! Why? So that I'll look savvy.

Movies, books, gossip, clothes, and the list goes on. I spend much more time with these things than I do in prayer or my devotions or any other worthwhile thing. Why?

Because in my life, I have made people and their opinions bigger than my God is.

I haven't read this book yet, but I'm going to as soon as I can find my mom's copy. My youth group is going through a study based on it right now. I think that the message it carries can easily apply to nearly every Christian today. Why do we raise other people on a high pedestal, fearing them over God? God holds the universe in the palm of His hand and orchestrates the tiniest details of each of our lives. What's more, He cares about us more deeply than any of our human friends ever could.

This week I want my God to be bigger to me than anything. Anything at all.