Who tells you how to live? “Clean up that mess in your room.” “Eat your vegetables.” “Don’t make the same mistakes I did.” You may also get life advice like this: “Try this, once won’t hurt.” “Come on, just have a little fun with us.” “It’ll be OK…no one will ever know.”

In Ephesians 2, (The Message), Paul writes, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and exhaled disobedience.” What are you filling your lungs with? Who are you listening to about choices in your life? In chapter 4, Paul tells us this, “And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd.” How often do you go along with the crowd? How often do we ALL go along with the crowd? Is there a difference between those of us who follow Christ and the world around us? There should be.

We who are called Christians are called to live our lives by a higher standard. This is how Paul puts it,

“everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new –way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you”

I pray your life is an example of a “God-fashioned life.” That is what Chrysalis is about really. Helping people discover that God wants to reproduce his character in us. It begins on the Chrysalis Flight and continues throughout our “Next Steps.” That is why being a part of a Chrysalis reunion group or other small group is so important. We need each other to support/encourage/challenge us as we learn how to live this new life. If you are not a part of some kind of small accountability group, I encourage you to find a group to join or start one with a friend or two. If you need some help with that, e-mail me. If I can pray for you as you learn to live this new life, e-mail me. May yours be a life that is unmistakably “God-fashioned.”