#puppet

It is so easy to think that we control ourselves. We aren’t a puppet. We don’t have strings hanging from us. We are the ones who choose to wear certain clothes, drive a certain car, go to a specific school, or work in a specific career field, right? What if I told you that those aren’t decisions you made on your own…

We may not have strings connected to us, but we are being influenced by something else. That influence could be the best thing for us or it could be the thing that is damaging us. Parents drive it into their children that they have to go to a four-year college, get a degree, and work as a lawyer or doctor. It gets drilled into the head of that child that the only way to be successful is to graduate college, but what happens when they fail accounting? 
 
The influence doesn’t just apply to parents and children. Each and every person is also bombarded with advertisements every single day. We see commercials and billboards everywhere. Those advertisements are infiltrating our psyche and causing us to buy a shoe or a watch for the status symbol and truthfully, we don’t really need any new stuff.  
 
We let these influences into our lives. They shape how we view ourselves, how we view the world, even how we view God. We become products of our culture. That is why it is so vital that we be intentional about the things we consume. We must be intentional in the values we hold. We must be intentional in who we let speak into our lives. 

We imitate the culture around us. If we want to make a change in our lives, then we must seek to live in a new culture. We must seek to have new influences in our lives. Our society will never shape us into the people of God, instead, we must be intentional in seeking the presence of God and intentional about the ideas we let into our lives. Find the people following after God, that you trust and respect, and let them influence you. Don’t let the world make you a puppet.

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