Articles
Set Apart to Build Something Different
Ants marching in a line: one by one they carry food and put it in a pile. A leaf falls from the tree above and blocks the way forward. What to do? In the movie “A Bug’s Life,” we see the above scenario play out. One of the ants helps the line of ants around the leaf and they get back on the trail.
It is amazing how often humans do the exact same thing. We will say that we don’t want to be like others, or we want to be individuals, but the reality is that most of us desire to be like everyone else. Walking like everyone else. Talking like everyone else. Dressing like everyone else.
Our Father has given us a choice. We can be like everyone else, or we can be like Him. The difficulty arises when we decide to try to choose both. God says, "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4).
One of the main threads in the book of Ezra is the point that, in order to be God’s people, we are going to be set apart. In Ezra 10 we come across Ezra finishing a prayer for the people and the people mourning over their choices. They had chosen to go back to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild Jerusalem, but had not fully separated themselves.
As God’s children we are set apart for a purpose. We are to be striving to be like our Father. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:19-20, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.” We must understand that God has made us holy, not to simply go back into the world, but to be lights to those in the world. We are meant for so much more than what this world has to offer, and therefore we need to live as such.
“Set apart for our God above
Set apart for the One we love
Set apart for Your glory we are Yours, Yours
Set apart for Your glory we are Yours, Yours
Set apart for Your glory we are Yours, Yours.”
