Life Hack #4 - Within or Without

Life Hack #4:

Keep those boundaries - but you have to know them before you can keep them! Boundaries are really nothing more than a dividing line. We have all kinds of "dividing lines" in life, don't we? Some are quite real - like those drawn for the purposes of playing a sport on the field. Others are set up in our minds - not specifically clear to others, but definitely clear to us. The problem comes when someone wants to move one of those boundaries - stretching it or reducing it in some manner. We feel a little threatened, challenged, or overcome by this attempt to move the "markers", don't we? 

Don’t stealthily move back the boundary lines staked out long ago by your ancestors. (Proverbs 22:28)

In Old Testament times, they did not have surveyors with highly technical laser point imaging tools to assist in laying out boundary lines. They'd use landmarks or "markers" of sorts to indicate a boundary. They'd say the boundary limit was the mountain range to the east or the river to the west. If they had no such "visible" limit, they'd set up some kind of pile of stones or pillar. That "pile" would stand as a marker to indicate the point of boundary. 

There are also boundary lines of different sorts which we often refer to as rules or commandments. The Ten Commandments were given as "protective boundaries" in our lives. They were never meant to be "laborious" or "impossible" to keep but were designed to assist us in remaining in a place of safety - spiritually, physically, emotionally, and 'relationally'. This is all that God's "rules" really are anyway - like guardrails on a winding highway, they keep us safe from going over the edge!

One thing is certain - boundaries are not to be moved! We cannot dispute the "ownership" of a particular piece of property because the boundary lines establish that ownership. The boundary lines we choose to live within in our own lives often show who has been declared the "owner" of our lives! Live within God's boundaries and we are showing he is the owner of our life. Choose to constantly be moving those boundary lines and we reveal the ownership is really ours and not his. This doesn't seem very significant, but we often move boundaries little by little, almost as though we'd hope nobody would notice them being moved. In truth, God catches each subtle movement of the boundaries, and he is grieved when we push them away, or even "fudge the line" a little.

Learning to trust the boundaries God establishes for our lives is part of growing up in Jesus. Trusting him enough to stay within those established boundaries is a matter of maturity - not moving those lines is a matter of obedience. Boundaries established early in our walk with Jesus are not meant to be moved later on - they may become clearer as we walk with him, but once established, they are to be honored. Just sayin!

My Best=His Best

It is quite easy for us to get 'drug down into' the culture of our day. The catty comments from opposing candidates catch our attention on the airwaves. The promise of this remedy providing instant this or that lures us into the latest of fads that only rob us of our hard-earned money and deliver none of the desired results. Easily swayed, we become 'prey' to these influencing factors. Wouldn't it be much more rewarding to be influenced with the type of things that actually pick us up instead of dragging us down? God's desire has always been for us to be 'drawn up', not down!

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:2 MSG)

We need to guard against 'separating' God from the various areas of our lives - holding some off-limits to him and giving him freedom to 'have at' others. God knows the influences that we respond to in some of those off-limit areas are the most important for him to begin to turn us away from - so denying him access isn't going to really work for us in the long run. Don't lose sight of how this passage begins - it isn't about us always wanting to turn those areas over to his control - he is going to help us to yield that influence to him if we will just ask for his help!

We take those areas easily influenced by things that serve to pull us down and we ask for his help to no longer be pulled in those directions. We don't always know what pulls at us, or how to avoid that influencing force. We might just have to admit we are 'helpless' to avoid that tempting force in order to be free of it! It is in placing these things before God (an offering of sorts) that we can begin to have the power of those influences revealed. We begin to see clearly because we are beginning to see things from a totally different perspective.

We are oftentimes 'well-adjusted' to our sin. We get into easily and we don't really see any need to be free of it. Let me just say this - we might not see the need, but others will. They look to us as their companions in this journey of faith. To settle for the presence of sin in our lives is to allow others to think God doesn't provide a means of overcoming those sins. We might not realize how much our embracing of sin actually influences another to let go of their own, but it does! This is actually how a set of values and beliefs becomes a culture!

The more we discover there are off-limit areas in our lives, the more we need to lean into Jesus and ask him to help bring the best out of us in those areas. We are well-versed in how to allow those influences to bring the worst from us - it is time we allow Jesus to show us how to bring the best into those places! Just sayin!