I JUST WANT TO FIT IN

 

One thing that most people desire is to fit in with others. Many have been willing to change the way they talk, the things the do, and how they live their lives or the sake of fitting in. Wanting to fit in can be good thing and a bad thing.

 

In this lesson we are going to explore this idea and look at from both sides. I believe it is a topic that is relevant no matter what your age or what time period you live. The first thing I want to do is look at the negative sides of wanting to fit in.

 

Our first point is wanting to fit in with the world.

 

Unfortunately, many people fall into this category. If you don’t fit in with the world, then you do not fit in with the majority. This overwhelming to many people because they don’t want to be different than other majority, they want to belong and be noticed. Those outside the majority feel like many times feel like they are missing out. That desire to fit it will cause them walk, talk, and act like those in the world even though they don’t like to do the things the world says they should do.

 

A great example of this comes from when Moses when up on the mountain to receive the 10 commandments from God.

 

Exodus 32:1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."  2 And Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me."  3 "So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.  4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, "This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!"  5 So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD."  6 Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.  7 And the LORD said to Moses, "Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.  8 "They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!' "

 

These Jews had become influenced by all the Egyptian idols they grew up around. Though the seen the many miracles of God, they wanted to make their own god all because Moses had not returned to them quickly. Though we are not given the details it my opinion that this idea of creating a god started with a small influential group and as they spread their idea on it spread like cancer. Once the idea was planted in their heads it sounded better and better. Even Aaron, could not resist fitting in with the others even though he knew better. The desire to fit in with the majority was just too strong and so feel right in line with creating the false God for the people.

 

That is how strong the desire to fit in with the majority can be. It can cause you to turn your back on God and make something else your God. The Bible warns us against fitting in with worldliness:

 

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  16 For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life -- is not of the Father but is of the world.  17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. 

 

Far too many Christians love the world more than they love God. Most of them do not start out that way, it a gradual process. We must never forget that the world is the devil playground and he wants us lured in whether it be slow or fast. He has until the end of this world to seek you out and devour you. He does not play fair. He will use whatever means available to him to cause you to want to fit in with the world. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are powerful tools he can use against us.

 

When he has trouble getting you early on he does not give up. After he tempted Jesus to sin we read:

 

Luke 4:13 Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.

 

Sometimes I see things I wish I didn’t. For example, I have seen Christian parents who started out loving God more than the world, but as the children grew older, the devil used their children to make them change. You see, their children began to get involved with worldly activities, ones that caused them to want to do things and dress certain ways so they could fit in with their friends.

 

At first, I have no doubt that the Christian parents took a solid stand against what their child wanted to do. As time progressed and the continual moaning and groaning of the child, they begin to give in and allow them to do a few things that would have never allowed them to do earlier on. As the expression goes, “give them an inch, and they take a mile.” It did not take long for the child to figure out how to manipulate their parents and used their parents love for them as a tool to help push toward accepting worldliness.

 

As I said, I have seen several Christian parents over the years change their attitude about things they determined not to allow when their children were younger. As Christian parents, we cannot allow the devil to use our desire for our children to fit into the world, and to have worldly friends to pull us away from God. No matter how many tears our children cry, no matter how times they tell us that we are not being fair, we cannot compromise the path to righteousness.

 

I would much rather see our children cry a river before allowing the world to suck them in and lead them down a path away from the only place where there will be no tears for eternity.

 

Sometimes all it takes for a parent to be pushed over to the way of world is by listening to their other worldly friends or to their Christian friends who have decided to live like the world. They hear them bragging about how their child won the sexist dance contest or he or he or she was voted to be the sexist dressed in the school. When we hear things like this it should make us cringe and feel sorry for how worldly that child has become, but instead, with some, they want to be able to brag about something to their friend so they do what they can make their child worldly so they can toot their horn to the friend.

 

Sometimes one of the more powerful ways that Christian is influenced to fit in with the world is when they see someone they grew up with in church, who knew right from wrong doing things that they know are wrong. When a Christian sees friend doing these things, instead of trying to warn them of the path they are and trying to influence them back toward God they start feeling sorry for themselves and start convincing themselves they have missed out on living life and so they began to engage in that worldly pleasure as well.

 

Friends we have to be careful about allowing the devil to use our children or our friends to cause us to desire to fit in with the world because losing our soul to the world is not worth it. Yes, many things in the world are full of temporary pleasure, otherwise sin would have no appeal, but we must learn to turn away from these temporary pleasures of life.

 

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

 

Our next point is fitting in with religion.

 

Again, people want to fit. It doesn’t matter if it is a cult, a denomination, or some other group. If that group will accept them, bring them in and show them some love, that person will many time become loyal to that group and adopt their teaching and their ways.

 

I don’t think anybody would grow up under normal circumstance and be willing to strap a bomb to their body or drive car full of bombs to kill other people, but that is exactly what true Islam resort. They find young men on the street and they take them in and make feel important. Since they have this love being showed to them and they want to fit in with their new family, they allow their minds to shaped by their teaching. Since they believe in their new family, they are willing to cut their life short by killing themselves and others with them.

 

While very few groups would use the power of fitting in to cause their disciples to kill themselves or others. Many use this concept to get people to follow after a man’s teaching instead of God’s teachings. I do not know how accurate these numbers are and they seem to keep changing. I have seen several times where it says that there are over 3000 denominations in the world. I have even seen the number higher than 20,000. Whatever the number is there are a bunch.

 

Each of these of these denominations follow after some creed or bylaw made by man. They call themselves denomination because they do things different than other places. Granted there are many God fearing people in these different groups, but they have allowed themselves to follow after some man-made teachings. Since they want to fit in, they continue to follow them regardless of what the Scriptures teach about what they are doing.

 

While the law of Moses was still in effect, Jesus ran across some people just like this in:

 

Matthew 15:1 Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying,  2 "Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread."  3 He answered and said to them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?  4 "For God commanded, saying, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.'  5 "But you say, 'Whoever says to his father or mother, "Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God" --   6 'then he need not honor his father or mother.' Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.  7 "Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:  8 'These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.  9 And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' "

 

When we allow ourselves to be influenced to fit in and practice man-made doctrines, God says it is vain worship and God will not be pleased it. Jesus said:

 

John 4:24 "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

 

It is not enough to allow ourselves to be guided with part of the truth and part with error. It is like oil and water it doesn’t mix. The last thing we should want is to find ourselves separated from God because we choose to worship Him and live our life the way we want to instead of how He wants us to. As Jesus said:

 

Matthew 7:21 " Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  22 "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'  23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'

 

Just like with worldliness the devil want use our desire to fit in to follow after a mans or a women’s teaching so that we be separated from God.

 

Our 3rd point is similar to our second one and that is some want to fit in the church of Christ.

 

You might think this is good thing and it can be, but what I am talking about those who simply become members of the church so that they can belong. I here to tell you that you are not any better off than other people I have just talked about if the main reason you became a member of the church was to fit in with others. Yes, you might do the right things, say the right things, but you became a member of the church for the wrong reason.

 

When your goal is just to fit in with others, your motivation is wrong and you could be just as lost as anyone else. You need to examine your life and ask yourself why you became a Christian. Did you become one just because you saw your friends get baptized into Christ? Did you become one just to make your family happy? Did you become one, just so you could get some attention? Only you and God know the real answer, but I can promise you that if did it for any other reason than doing it for God knowing that you were a sinner that cleansed by the blood of Jesus, then you did for the wrong reasons.

 

You allowed your desire to fit in instead of desire to please God. If this describes you, then you need to make your life right with God. Not because I say so, or because of what anyone has done or said. Do it for God and do it for yourself knowing that your heart is the right place.

 

This brings to our final point which is the good part of wanting to fit it.

 

I believe God has built the desire in us to want to fit in, but like anything else we can use what He given us good or bad. We have already seen many of wrong ways this desire can lead us, but it can be used to fit in with God. When we desire to fit in with God because we love Him and we want to be pleasing to Him, then we have it right.

 

God and His precious teaching should be our desire. We can know from Bible that God will never lead us astray. Instead, He will lead us to victory over death and He will allow us to spend eternity in heaven. We can be confident, that when we desire to fit it with God and His plan that our lives will be blessed, and each day will have meaning and hope.

 

So let us never stop trying to fit in with the Lord who said:

 

Hebrews 13:5  "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

 

Or as Paul expressed in:

 

Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  36 As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."  37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,  39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

 

God will show you more love than any person or group. No one can make the promises that God makes. So, allow yourself to fit in with God and His truth and not the world or the teachings of man. Only God can give you eternal life in heaven. The only thing man can offer you is temporary pleasure and empty promise that will lead you to the lake of fire.

 

I hope you will examine your life and if you find that you are trying to fit in with the world or with the teachings of man or just trying to be like everyone else that you open your eyes to the need of making God your priority and trying to fit in with Him who offers everlasting life in heaven. I want close my lesson with the Words of Jesus:

 

Matthew 7:13 " Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  14 "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.