Following The Crowd!

I was reading today in Acts 19, about a riot that started as a result of Paul's teaching and preaching...here's the story...

There was this guy in Ephesus who was a silversmith named Demetrius. His company was responsible for making the silver shrines of the Greek goddess Artemis. So Paul goes into the town preaching and teaching that hand made gods weren't really gods at all, needless to say this upset alot of his employees...to make along story kind of shorter...these guys started a riot and everyone rushed into local amphitheater dragging along a couple of Paul's traveling buddies. No doubt with the intention of hurting them or even killing them.

The verse that jumped of the page at me was verse 32, it says, "Inside, the people were all shouting one thing and some another. Everything was in confusion. In fact, most of them didn't even know why they were there."

Imagine that you are in this huge amphitheatre and everyone is yelling. You look at your friend and say "why are we here?" And he replies, "I don't know I was just following the crowd."

How many of us do that exact same thing in our lives. How often do we find ourselves following the crowd? Not 100% sure why we are here, but simply going with the flow.

I want to challenge you today to know why you're here! Quit just following the crowd and doing what everyone else does. The other day I watched a movie about a young 13 year old girl. She began as the sweet, smart and innocent girl, but because of her desire to be popular and accepted she began stealing, doing drugs and being sexually active. To see this progression literally broke my heart!

Take a moment today to understand that you are here to have a relationship with your Heavenly Father. God never intended for you to simply follow the crowd. He wants to be your Father and he wants you to be His child!