Contagion

Today I spoke on why being naked is the point. I spent a good portion of the talk on nudity and the whole deal with Adam and Eve in the garden being naked. And how it wasn't until they rebelled against God that they saw their nakedness. The reason that was, I believe, is because before they rebelled their validation came from God and him alone. Once that relationship was broken, the only place their validation could come from was each other. And there is something inside of us that loves to judge each other and so we hide ourselves from each other.

I asked everyone at what point does a child understand that being naked in public is wrong? Do they just figure it out or are they programmed by society to know it? I think the Fall is what makes us understand it because we are born into sin. (sorry for the preachy language here).

The point was this: who you become is determined by who you listen to. The central idea of this talk came from Donald Miller's book "In search of God knows what". I used it because I believe it's true. We are wired to recieve our validation from someone. It doesn't come from us. We could sit around and tell ourselves how good we are and in an instant, we can be deflated because someone comes along and tells us we are a loser. But it doesn't have to be this way! Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the relationship that Adam and Eve had with God in the Garden of Eden can be ours. We have direct communication with God if we choose it. We can be validated completely by God and become the person that we were meant to be all along. But we have to choose to listen to him and not the culture around us.

We showed a video of a homeless guy on a curb rocking back and forth. That's all it is. We then added Beck's "I'm a loser baby" into the back ground and put Psalm 139:13-18 on the screen one verse at a time. It was awesome It created this crazy tension where you hear these lyrics and they tick you off but you see these verses on the screen of God speaking to us of who we are. It mirrored how society screams at us, telling us who it thinks we are and at the same time, God speaks to us validating us, telling us who we really are.

The question is, who are we going to listen to? Because ultimately, who we listen to determines who we become. I'm making it my priority to do everything in my power to listen to who God thinks I am. I've let others determine my future for way to long and I'm ready to become the person that I'm meant to be. Are you in?