We have some Australian missionary friends here in Arequipa, Peru. They have two teenage girls. They work in a different mission than we do, but one day they visited our church. That day, my older sister and I took them with us to youth group.
Now, around this time, our youth group had started doing something different: singing praise songs before the lesson. None of us were very used to it, and the Peruvians barely made any noise. Unfortunately, that peer pressure led me to barely sing as well. However, when we brought our Australian friends that day, they did not pay attention to what
everyone else was doing, instead just singing. Their example showed me that I was sinning by conforming. That day, I had the courage to focus on God instead of on my peers while I sang.
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In this story I payed more attention to the people with whom I was singing than to the Person to whom I was singing. I was technically singing, but I was not praising God. This is how peer pressure works for Christians: it tells us that we can glorify God while conforming to whatever everyone else does; but this is just not true. When we put our peers' opinions above God, we are essentially putting them over Him.
My point is not that people who don't like singing publicly to praise God are sinners. There are ways to glorify the Lord beyond singing. My point is that I was sinning by turning an opportunity to praise Him on its head, instead giving the impression that “being cool” was more important that glorifying Him.
However, our friends did the opposite. They showed that God was more important to them that what others thought. But there's the catch – the others probably didn't think anything. They were too concentrated on what their peers would think of them than on what they thought of their peers; and even if those peers did have the time to pay attention to what everyone else was doing, they wouldn't have cared. So all of us (except our friends) wrecked our time to praise God by thinking about what others thought, which didn't really matter because they didn't think anything. Does that make sense?
Galatians 1:10 says, “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” In this passage, Paul says that, since we are servants of Jesus, we need to do things of which God approves. Sure, it is nice to please other people, but God is infinitely more important than they are, and His approval is infinitely more rewarding than theirs.
It's just so easy to conform because the pressure to do so is right here. It would be so much easier to do as God wants if we could feel a pressure, a desire, to do His will instead of to cave to peer pressure. And that's what we forget: we do have that pressure – it comes from constantly reading God's Word and praying, learning what He wants us to do. We just often feel that human pressure is more urgent. We need to switch our mindset, pushing away human approval and pulling close heavenly approval.
To sum up, we have to choose whose approval we want. There is a constant battle going on in our lives: God vs. others. Pray today that God would help you rearrange your priorities to put Him first.
IMAGE CREDIT:
This is good, conforming to this world is a problem. I John 2:15-17!!!