You've got to conform to belong.

Today I am thinking about conformity.

This is something that I have always had a problem with. Basically I have never seen the point of not conforming to rules and instructions. If there is a guideline I will naturally think gnat someone has taken time to consider an issue and has then decided upon a right way of doing things. The more I think about this the more I think I am wrong! I guess you could call this social conformity.

There is another conformity that I also fall into but with a great deal more consideration and that is spiritual conformity. This might apply to my daily living or my Christian leadership within the church. It is that I 'do' my faith and all that surrounds it in such a way that it represents what others think it should rather than what God desires of me.

And I guess a lot of people fulfil this conformity with very little thought.

I sometimes live my discipleship as if the approval of my peers is what should be sought instead of the approval of Christ. I let them dictate my timetable, my activities, what I do in my spare time and many other things that are neither God glorifying or God's will for me - and perhaps that is where the tipping point is: our relationship with God is personal, he has a plan for each of us that is different, in the main, to the next person. We live, however, in a conforming world and so overlay that experience onto our spiritual lives and conform to others rather than the 'inward renewing of our hearts and minds' by Christ (Romans 12:2).

Today then, even though I have a full diary of commitments and meetings, I will stop regularly to consider: who set this task, this thought, this action? Is it someone else? Is it me? Or is it Christ?