Food for Thought... Love, Trust, and Baggage, Part II

Click here for Food for Thought... Love, Trust and Baggage, Part I.

Like I said in the last post, Minister Cory has been teaching on the topic of marriage and relationships for the past 3 years. I remember the first time I heard one of his sermons.  It was a Friday evening, (and that seems to be his night, twice a month looks like). He is a very unassuming man, and he said he wanted to talk about dating and that he would do something different, like pass the microphone around and let people ask questions. I was like, hmmm... okay.

Then he told us his dating stories of before he got married some 25 years ago.

Mind you, he was in a touring member of an R&B band.

I ain't gonna put the man's business in the street. But the stuff he told us had us all O_O.

So, let's just say... people felt VERY free to talk about some of their problems.

VERY free.

I heard some things that night that made me almost holler "WOW!"

I think I was holding my breath a few times there.

There was a PARTICULARLY gorgeous man, a very tall redbone drink of water, who gave a particularly eloquent question about his choice to be celibate but finding that women found that to be a bit... challenging.

This elicited a few audible sounds from the ladies. The man was FINE.

Uh, I must admit I felt bad for him. Here was a man who was trying to live right, but had trouble finding a serious relationship. Let me tell you, Christian women can be worse than hoes in the street. That is all I gotta say about that. (I know quite a few.)

And after the young man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties finished speaking, and we all looked from him to Minister Corey for some remarkable answer.

And Minister Corey basically turned to a scripture that has basically been the foundation scripture for the past three years... and rightly so:

Romans 12:1-2  (I have looked at a ton of translations, and here are three that strike a chord with me):

Amplified Version:
 ¹I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship. ²Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

Message Version:
^1-2 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. 

JB Phillips version:
^1-2 With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

And that seem to be the answer to many people's issues...

The parts in green caught my attention... Sometimes you gotta work renewing your mind... Just to prove a thing or two to yourself, man. Bottom line.

Minister Corey was telling people they had to make choices based on the Word... or basically do what everybody else is doing.

Folks didn't want to hear that... There was a lot of "But, but..."

But nothing. Renew your mind to God's Word.

And I think that is the whole point of His marriage and relationship series. Do you handle your issues according to what you see on TV, what your friends doing, what EVERYBODY else is doing?

Or do you lay your decisions and thoughts and actions on top of the Word and follow IT instead?

Hard decisons, as you know we are in a highly distracting world. I struggle with this myself. I tell you, there are times when I got my kindle out, fooling with it... I got the TV on, I'm texting on my cellphone, I got the laptop going AND the netbook going...

Just distracted.

And that is from someone like me who spends some time praying and reading and thinking and such.

SUPER SIGH.

So it's so easy to look up and be "conformed" to this world.

One of my readers told me that she's fasting from TV. I don't know if it was for a day or a week or what... But I am SURE the quality of her life increased.  I would love to know what she learned about herself in the process.

Distraction... it is something else... And it leads to conformity. And that is unfortunate in many cases.  It's an uneasy feeling when you wake up and you can't tell the difference between yourself and others.

This is probably the reason why I can't stand cliques and group think. I like to be able to be able to tell the difference between myself and other people.

I heard long time ago that we are built to move towards pleasure and away from pain.

Some pleasurable things are just not good for you. Some painful things require hard work but in the long run are good for you.

Hmmm...

And when it comes to love and trust of others... difficulties abound.

(That was just a little background. And it was a bit of my freestyle thoughts running free. i didn't even get to the love and trust part.This post is running too long... Hows about a Part III tomorrow?)

LOL...

To be continued.