Sang Tere (With You)Sýnishorn

Day 2- Co -Laboring with Culture

How do we become world changers?

How do we transform cities and nations? We all have a desire in our hearts to see our cities transformed, but we end up feeling frustrated and powerless by what we can’t change.

I believe that the gospel isn’t about changing people or fixing people but rather loving them with no strings attached.

We do the loving part, God does the transforming part.

We don’t fix, He does!

When culture seems to be a barrier we learn to understand and work with it instead of complaining about it.

Culture plays a vital role in the lives of people.

Sometimes in the process of bringing transformation we end up hurting people. We don’t make enough effort to understand their culture, so we constantly misunderstand them, which is the root cause to more problems.

The culture you are put in may have a lot of loop-holes but trying to fix culture without understanding it will only cause more damage.

I had to remind myself of this all the time,

“I am not the savior of this world only God is.”

I love the story of Daniel, he was put in a culture that seemed very difficult to work with, yet he became the most influential man who had tremendous favor with the king.

He wasn’t trying to change their culture or do something that challenges their belief system, he just remained faithful to who He is. He loved the lord and his devotion and relationship with God opened doors for him to work with a culture that doesn’t know God. Daniel was even thrown into the lions den and even there he found favor!

Transformation is always the fruit of love.

Even Nehemiah had found favor with his king in a culture that was completely irrelevant to him.Both Daniel and Nehemiah, honored and served their kings faithfully rather than worrying about the kings disagreements or fretting over how to change the nation. We shouldn’t become the victims of culture but rather the influencers of it. Although we live in a culture that seems very hard to work with, we must believe that God raised us up to be cultural architects!

To start with, we should learn to pursue the gold in every culture and we must learn to honor and work with it.

Like Daniel and Nehemiah we should remain faithful to our calling and always remember who we are in Christ. It’s not what we do but who we are that transforms culture. When people see our lifestyle, their culture begins to transform undoubtedly and that’s how we become world changers.

You can only transform what you consider as yours!

Activation:

1 - Repent from complaining about culture, refrain from being a cultural victim and start believing that you are a cultural architect.

2 - Ask God to show you the Gold in your culture and also ways to work with the culture you are put into.