Am I Impressed or Influenced By Evil Around Me?

 

I have a sticky note that lives on the bulletin board in my office.

 

I happened to look up at it just yesterday morning and was reminded of something that I desperately needed.

 

The words on the sticky note read: “I must live with a refusal to be impressed by the evil around me, an insist upon living influenced only by what what is going on above me.”

 

Ahh.. yes.

 

Maybe you need reminded of this too.

 

It could just be behaving like Jesus.

Who, “retreated” often to be with the Father.

Who knew where His help came from and maintained FOCUSED attention on the Father.

 

In Luke, chapter 4, Jesus returns to Galilee and is rejected in His hometown of Nazareth.

 

It is amazing to think that the very people who you would consider most LIKELY to accept Him in His position as Messiah, would do so. 

 

But they reject Him.

 

They ask, even in their amazement of Him, “How can this be?” (that He spoke such gracious words), “Isn’t this Joseph’s Son?” (verse 22)

 

He continues with some challenging content, and one that particularly outraged the onlookers. And that was His Jesus’s apparent favor of Gentiles as well as Jews. The Jews had viewed themselves as the sole recipients of God’s special favor, and retaliated against the very idea of that kind of grace.

 


Ahh… anything but THAT kind of grace! (sounds eerily familiar.)

 

And when the Jews heard this kind of talk from the One they hoped would bring the sword and incite harsh judgement, they jumped up, mobbed Him, and forced Him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. Scripture tells us in verse 29, that, “they intended to push Him off the cliff”, but He, “passed right through the crowd and went on His way.” (verse 30)

 

Oh how much we would be spared if we, too, “passed right through” and “went on our way.”

It’s making a choice…

 

To REFUSE to live REACTIONARY to the evil around me, and instead living in RESPONSE to the Father.

 

It’s turning the other cheek.

It’s giving up on a “right” to retaliate.

 

And so I would add to my sticky note this morning and say this - to myself and to you -

Let’s STOP living as if we’re so impressed and thus so influenced by evil. Let’s live, instead, with a DIVINE REFUSAL to be impressed by the evil around us - paying attention only to what’s above me!

 

It truly isn’t what is happening around me that is issue…

but what is happening ABOVE me and INSIDE me that matters most of all.

 

How are we allowing ourselves to be defined by the challenging times of our day?

How are we choosing, instead, to focus on what JESUS is doing?

 

It matters!