What's Ruling Your Life?
Video games have always been a massive part of my life.
I have spent a lot of time playing them. For a while, they were a form of escapism and a coping mechanism for life’s difficulties. But video games had too much control on my life – I claimed I wanted to be a leader, wanted to work for a church, wanted to teach and preach with integrity, but it didn’t all add up. I left so little time for learning, reading the Bible and spending time in God’s presence. I wasn’t leaving room to be formed into the person that God made me to be. Instead I gamed and this had to change. I’ve journeyed this for the past few years and it’s one area in my life where I’m trying to become distinct.
We live in a culture where everyone claims that they want to be individual. They don’t want to be like everyone else. They want to be distinct. But this isn’t reality. The reality is that most of us just go along with popular culture. As followers of Jesus we are called to be truly distinct. We need to look at our culture and decide what is and what isn’t like Jesus. From there we can choose a distinct life founded in biblical truth.
Great examples of men and women who did just this can be found throughout scripture. They challenged aspects of culture and made themselves distinct. Jesus was hugely counter-cultural. He hung out with the people no one else would. He promoted peace instead of violence. He chose love instead of division.
“As followers of Jesus, we are called to be truly distinct”
Similarly, Paul constantly encourages us to go against culture. He urges his friends to avoid things that won’t help them to grow into the people God has designed them to be.
Finally, Daniel – who we will be focusing on at this year’s Onelife Conference. The book of Daniel tells the story of a young prophet taken into a foreign land and made to serve a foreign king. He had many choices, but his main decision was whether to follow this new culture and forget about his God, or to resist and continue worshiping his God – our God. This is a story of God honouring those who live distinctly godly lives.
But being distinct is hard. Firstly, it can be hard to work out what it even means to be distinct and why we should do it. Then it can be hard to put this into practice. But it isn’t impossible. To start trying to live a distinct life, we must look at our rule of life. At the Onelife Conference I will be looking at what a rule of life is. I’ll look at how we can be aware of it, change it and develop it to match our passions and values. Most importantly, I’ll look at how we can let Jesus use our rule of life and mould us into the best Christ-like leaders we can be.
Learning to spend less time gaming and more time feeding my other passions was just one of the small steps in what I hope is a lifetime of forming my rule of life. But small steps make a big difference.
Onelife Conference 2020: Distinct
With seminars, main sessions, panels and coaching delivered by exceptional leaders from every sphere of society, this is a conference for young people who are serious about exploring their call to lead like Jesus, wherever he calls them to be.