Talking like I'm from Kentucky

Prayer: God, teach me to hear from your word. Allow me to know you in a new and rich way, not in a way that simply keeps me caught up in today. Allow me to hear from your Word in way that goes beyond information, and instead, transforms me. Allow me to morphed into your image through your Word.

^1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 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. (Romans 12:1-2, The Message)

If you haven't realized it yet, Beth has an accent. Beth grew up in Western NY, and has quite the little NY accent. It's not a New York City accent, but it's unique and she says words like "calendar" and "mitten" in a weird way. Well, weird to me at least.

Here's the funny thing...I can always tell when Beth has been talking to her mom on the phone. I can tell because her accent comes out. But I can also tell when Beth has been around some of our friends from the Southern part of the US, because she'll talk like them as well. Beth's accent copies whomever she's just been talking to.

When Paul writes to the church in Rome, he realizes that it's really easy to be like the rest of the world. Rome was the center of culture, and the church he was writing to was quickly beginnng to look and act and be like everybody else. Paul realizes that as Christians we are to look and act differently then the rest of the world...we are to be changed from the inside out.

As you go today, think about the ways that you've looked like everybody else around you. Does the accent of your life reflect that you've been spending time with Christ, or does the accent of your life reflect the rest of the world? Have you been allowing God to bring out the best in you?

As you close, reflect on this song...Allow it to speak to you as you worship God along with it.