The audio for this devotional is not available for now, but you can have your device read it to you.
Reading options
Verse:And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. —Romans 12:2
One of the greatest challenges for God’s people over the centuries has been remaining loyal to Christ when their faith is in conflict with contemporary social values. Culture has always tempted God’s people, but the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s became a time of extreme rebellion against traditional values. Disillusioned with the contemporary culture, and especially weary of the Vietnam War (1955–1975), many American young people latched on to the motto “Make Love, Not War.” Escaping their families, some decided to live in hippie communes and attempted to find the ideal environment in which to express their sinful desires through free love, drugs, and psychedelic rock music. The ultimate expression of the countercultural movement was the Woodstock Music Festival held in Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969.
The long and disastrous Vietnam War finally ended with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, leaving more than fifty-eight thousand Americans dead.
The hippie movement eventually disappeared, but many of the countercultural winds of the 1960s and 1970s continue to blow today.
Our contemporary society is overstimulated by sounds and images and is characterized by a sex-obsessed culture. Furthermore, the postmodern mind questions the absolute values of the Bible. Surrounded by so many cultural temptations, we must take the words of Psalm 119:9 seriously: “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word” (NIV). The Message paraphrase of Romans 12:2 adds, “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.” In His priestly prayer, Jesus asked the Father, “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
May His prayer be our own today and every day!