Celebrities...

Dear Friends and People whom I love,

I've found myself awoken by Brad Paisley's song "Celebrity" and it got me thinking...

Why do we fawn over, fantasize about, dream about, hope about meeting, reading the gossip in the magazines, buying CD and movie one after the other, oh, and my personal favorite, start putting Celebrities above God?

Celebrities don't care that we have their best lines and greatest songs memorized.  They don't care if they're in the spotlight...oh, wait, I'm sure at some point they do, and I mean who can blame them?  I honestly wonder how many of their lives have been ravished because of us...their "fans."

"'Cause when you're a celebrity

It's adios reality

No matter what you do 

People think you're cool

Just 'cause you're on TV

I can fall in and out of love

Have marriages that barely last a month

When they go down the drain

I'll blame it on the fame

And say it's just so tough

Being a celebrity"

I can't believe how accurate that is.  It always makes me feel bad.  For example, The Bachelor/Bachelorette, from the first episode you're hoping the girl/guy that you like will win (I know from personal experience), but do we ever think about the women/men who truly fall for this person and have to suffer the heartbreak at not being chosen?  Only if our person didn't win, right?

Another example, Survivor/Dancing With The Stars, etcetera.  We pick someone from the beginning there too.  And all of those shows (and countless others) seem to take over our lives for an entire season, or the entire series. (Other examples, 'LOST' 'NCIS' 'King Of Queens' 'Everybody Loves Raymond' 'Two And A 1/2 Men' 'The Simpsons' 'True Blood' 'Law & Order' {any of them} 'Spongebob Squarepants' and on and on the list goes.)  We're willing to give up, an hour, two hours, heck, a whole marathon to watch these shows.  I wonder how many of us, myself included, spend more time watching and obsessing over these (and the internet and texting and friends, etcetera, etcetera.) than we do reading our Bibles and talking to God, oh, oh, oh, or reaching out to the lost.

In this society God has taken a backseat to all of life.  I see teenagers having sex (I was there 5 or less years ago and I'm pretty -sure, "everyone" wasn't doing it).  Christians are dating non-Christians and justifying everything or avoiding the people or God that will let them know.  Christians have also (not just teens) have started to accept that sex outside of marriage is okay, and clearly God didn't think it was, its referenced so many times in the Bible.  As Christians I think we've lost the hearts cry for the lost and I think I know why no one genuinely wants to change, (no one wants to be become a Christian) is because, hey, we're as much in the world as they are.

We KNOW beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that sinning is wrong, they don't know that (or just deny it), but how could they?  If we justify every bad things we do, why can't they, who have no accountability?  We've become hypocrites in a world inDESPERATELY in need of Christians who WALK the talk, and not just when we're at Church, but on a daily basis. "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  I'm almost positive that if we all, as Christians, started living, not just a life worthy of the calling, but a life that people can't help but want to be a part of it.

The Bible says to be in the world, but not OF the world and I think we've faded...I think we're on the very tip of the fence, one second of imbalance will put us of the world or simply in the world. Its time we got off the fence and stopped living this double life! (To my fellow Reborne Ranger, past and present, SEMPER-FI!!!)  By being on the fence or of the world we have put every thing this world has to offer (what I've already mentioned and much, much more) in God's place in our lives.

I said once in my status (Facebook)..."Sometimes we try so hard NOT to become someone, that one day we wake up, look in the mirror and we see we've already become what we swore we'd never be."  dc Talk puts it this way, "The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today, is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with they're lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.  This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

If we were in the spotlight...

What would people see?

What does God already see?

And What do we need to change?

Let us be in the world and not of the world.

Christ came to die, once for all...don't we offer him every day, every moment, every breath of our entire lives?  I say yes.

"Some people never change. As Christians we should stand out, not back down, not fade away into the world. We're called to be in the world, but not of. We're called to live as Christ, that's what the word "Christian" means. Sometimes Christian friends fade away...when will we actually become what we promised God we'd be? Stand up, stand out, stand against the ways of the world and STAND up for Christ!!"  I may have said this...but its true.

SEMPER-FI!!!  DO OR DIE!!