When it comes to making a change in our world, we often feel...
- Who am I to make a difference? I’m only one person.
- What does it matter what I say? Who listens to me anyway?
- I don’t have a platform. How would I get my voice heard if I did try to make a change?
Have you had similar thoughts? I did. I wasn't thinking about making a difference in the world’s culture—maybe in my world. Then during the journey of starting the Woman to Woman Mentoring Ministry and watching lives changing—one woman at a time—I realized I was making a difference. These mentors and mentees were making a difference. One woman mentoring another woman was having a ripple effect out into the culture.
You can make a significant change in our culture today. God never forces us to do anything, but He created us with gifts and a purpose, and when we use our God-given talents for His glory, things change—for the good—in our circle of influence, our platform.
In the Great Commission (Mark 16:15-16), Jesus tells us to shout the Good News to everyone who will listen. That means in our jobs, activities, sports, shopping, playing... whatever we do, wherever we do it... joyfully let others know that God is at the center of our lives. Someone is noticing. Someone sees a difference in how we live our lives, and that changes things.
Celebrities, Sports Stars, and Politicians
Movies stars have changed the culture mostly in a negative way by making it fashionable to have babies with whomever they’re dating, normalizing living together without getting married, wearing revealing clothes, swearing and using vulgar language—both men and women—and doing things in movies we would never let them do in our living rooms. They have influenced our culture by lowering the moral and sexual standards for society.
Sports figures and teams often become idols. Olympic swimmers lied and falsified an assault story in Brazil, and yet one of them ended up on Dancing with the Stars! Instead of being good role models, again we see the culture influenced in worldly, ungodly ways, while sports figures honoring God are often ridiculed. Still it was refreshing to hear many 2016 Olympians praising God.
People don’t trust politicians. Many will change the culture for good, but others make changes that starkly contradict our Christian beliefs and values. The media blasts politicians who agree with a Christian agenda because the majority of culture today is secular.
We’ve seen the secular agenda invade the Federal and local government, and we feel helpless watching the sanctity of life and marriage destroyed by laws legalizing sin. We cry out to God and to each other at the atrocities; but after we vote and lose, we hang our heads thinking we can’t do anything. But that’s when the real work begins.
There’s more to changing culture than just voting! We still have control of where we spend our money, our time, and how we use our voice and influence.
You Can Change Culture
It’s time for Christians to step up, speak out, and seize opportunities to defend God and change our culture back to one that respects and honors virtue and morals. We need a revival, which starts in the church with the people sitting in the pews. That’s you and me!
Christianity has been under attack by the media, the government, and the entertainment world in our culture for several generations, so today’s generation has formed prejudices and perceptions based more on the worldly lies of Satan than the truths of God. We need to proclaim the Good
News of Christ because they’ve only heard the distorted lies of Satan.
10 Ideas for What You Can Do to Change Culture
1. Speak Up
Today, society marginalizes, neutralizes, and denies God—forgotten by a culture forsaking Him. Wherever and whenever you hear someone speaking disrespectfully of God, kindly let him or her know you’re a believer and explain why and what you believe, and would they please speak respectfully of the most important person in your life.
2. Mentor
I receive so many stories from women of all ages desperate for someone spiritually older to share their life experiences and God’s faithfulness. They’re begging for mentors as Titus 2:1-8 instructs spiritually older Christians to help spiritually younger men and women learn how to navigate life and make choices that honor God. If more Christians became mentors, we would see less violence, rage, poverty, divorce, single-parent families, abuse, abortion… the list goes on. Titus 2:5 says we mentor so “no one will malign the word of God.”
3. Use Social Media
As an author, I have a large social media presence, and I boldly comment from a Christian perspective. A young mom approached me at church and thanked me for my Facebook posts. She said I always wrote something on my timeline just when she needed it or when she needed perspective on a current topic.
I have no idea how many lives I may be touching and changing through social media, but I try to always include something about God in today’s culture, and hope it sounds doable to my readers to duplicate.
Pick one form of social media, establish a following, and get a dialogue going for cultural change.
4. Blogging
I also write a weekly Monday Morning Blog. Not everyone likes to write, but a blog reaches multitudes. Whatever your passion is—sports, gardening, building, cooking, parenting—write about it and add something in your post to help the reader make positive cultural changes in his/her life or environment.
5. Parenting
Your children are the future of our country and will define the culture for decades. They look to you for guidance and direction to set their moral compass. Talk about the difficult issues they face. Know what the culture is saying and doing and teach them how to identify twisted doctrine and counter it with the truth. Give them the tools they need to be change agents in the culture. Help them be leaders, not followers.
6. Teach Sunday School or Help in Youth Ministry
One of the most important roles in the church is teaching and training the next generation. These children and youth are the future of the church who will be change makers or breakers. They must go into the world not only knowing about Jesus, but also knowing Him in a personal relationship they wouldn’t give up or give away for anything.
7. Support Businesses that Champion Christian Values
Businesses are succumbing to the cultural pressure to market and financially support the LGBT agenda. We have a choice where we spend our money and our time. If you know a business supports something you don’t agree with, don’t spend money there. It’s that simple. There are plenty of other places to eat and shop—especially those owned by Christians.
If a movie is full of violence, sex, and vulgar language... don’t see it. Go to opening weekend of a Christian movie. Businesses, television, Hollywood, and the sports industry take notice when revenue declines.
8. Try Running for a Local Office
We need more Christians in government. So if you feel called to run for office, answer that call and become a Christian voice in your community.
9. Remember God’s Goodness
When we remember how good God has been in the past, we share it with others. Today’s children don’t know a world where you can pray, talk about Jesus, and take your Bible to school. It’s our job to tell them that the culture we’re living in today is not God’s way, but we can find our way back to His ways.
10. Prayer
God hears the prayers of His people: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Jesus changed the culture, and He was only one man, whose fame came after His death, but He left a band of followers to keep up His work of changing the worldly culture.
“As Christians, God calls us to live holy lives: separated to God, separated from the world, and separated for God. Our responsibility is to help a generation that thrives on conforming, want to conform to God’s standards! Don’t think you can’t make a difference. You can. Sure, you can’t transform the whole world, but you can make a difference in your world.”*
*Excerpt from Forsaken God?: Remembering the Goodness of God Our Culture Has Forgotten
Janet Thompson is an international speaker, freelance editor, and award-winning author of 18 books including, new release Forsaken God?: Remembering the Goodness of God Our Culture Has Forgotten, and The Team That Jesus Built, Dear God, Why Can’t I Have a Baby?, Dear God They Say It’s Cancer, Praying for Your Prodigal Daughter, and the Face-to-Face Bible study series. She is also the founder of Woman to Woman Mentoring and About His Work Ministries.
Visit Janet at: womantowomanmentoring.com.
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Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com
Publication date: October 28, 2016