Regardless of your original intention...

To complete the quote from the title:

"Regardless of your original intention, you will eventually become what you surround yourself with"

This is so true: "You can judge a man by the company he keeps."

If you wanted to know about me you could look at the music on my ipod, the books on my shelf, the tv shows I watch, and the websites I spend my time on.  

Now this post is based off of John Bytheway's talk "The parable of the marinade."  I love his talks and I own (but mostly borrowed from Josh,) many of his talks on cd.  I put them on my phone and listen to them when I drive and when I'm editing pictures.  This was one of my very favorites. 

He talks about how a marinade works on chicken, well you put the chicken in the marinade and let it sit for a while, eventually the chicken takes upon itself the flavor and after it's cooked it tastes so much better!  The same can happen with us for good or for bad.  John says "Look at your personal marinade, because whether you realize it or not we are all marinating in something." 

What if we marinated in GREATNESS?

Romans 12:21 says, "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."  Replace with good.  

Chad Lewis has said "you can't play with a skunk and not stink.  If you listen to skunky music...you going to stink!" 

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH GREATNESS

Take a look at your personal marinade.  Is there anything toxic that you need to get rid of?  {replace it with good!} 

There is an old indian chief talking to his grandson.  Good and Evil are like two wolves inside of you fighting inside of you.  The grandson asked "well which one wins?"  The grandfather said: "the one that I feed."

Starve the bad habit and feed the good one.

John Bytheway suggested why don't we just buy some acreage and live up in the mountains away from the world.  Only let good movies in, create our own righteous itunes, and we could surround ourselves with pure awesomeness!  But like John said, there are two things wrong with this idea

1. God has called us to be a light to the world. John 14:15 "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."  Go down there to that filthy world and don't get dirty.
2. It would be really easy to choose the right, if choosing the wrong was just not an option.  There is a BIG difference between forced abstinence and freely chosen virtue.

"Live in the world but not Of the world" 

And the good news is...you are NOT  a piece of chicken.  Chicken in a marinade cannot say I am here but I refuse to be affected by you, but we CAN.  Between stimulus and response is a space.  You can be in this world but choose not to be OF the world.  There is a way and He provided it.  

Anyway, thanks for reading this post and if you have any comments to add please comment them below.  I hope you see where John is coming from and what I chose to reiterate. 

K

This is his CD with the entire talk. 

http://deseretbook.com/Parable-Marinade-John-Bytheway/i/5099043