Being Seperate in a "Normal" World

This is a picture of Alaena and her "Shaw-aw-awn" (Southern little girl for Shawn.) She loves Shawn. Funnily enough, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to how country she sounded when she said his name. Likely because I'm a southern girl, with southern parents, southern grandparents. In other words, what I heard was normal.
However, Shawn said, "She sure is country when she says my name." Now don't misunderstand, Shawn has a southern drawl to compete with the best of them, but he has family who isn't from here who pick on him incessantly for his accent. So he hears it more in himself and others.
Anyway, I started thinking about all the things we just let pass through our lives as "the norm" anymore. The pastoral candidate at our church right now has been studying Psalm 1 on Wednesday nights, and he has talked about the righteous person, and the ungodly person and the differences between them.
A truly righteous person is a rare gem these days. This person is someone who steers clear of the ways of the ungodly person. Check out the first verse of Psalm 1:

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."

A truly righteous person doesn't listen to the counsel of the ungodly. (For example, they look to God's Word for direction, not Oprah.) As I sat thinking about what I look at as normal, I realized that I myself sometimes look to this world's counsel. I think, Hmmm, if that works for them, then maybe I should try it... And it isn't on necessarily bad things, but God told us to look to Him as our authority on EVERYTHING. Why? Because if we start to look to the world as our directive on the small, seemingly meaningless things, eventually we will look to them for the bigger things, the things that matter. Eventually we'll find ourselves saying, "Well is THAT really so wrong?"
A truly righteous person also doesn't stay stuck in sin. They don't just stand there thinking, "Hey, this makes me happy, it's not going to hurt." They realize the wrong they are doing, and they can't stay there. That's not to say this person is sinless, but they can't stand being in that sin for long. The close relationship they have with God won't allow them to stay there. Today, it's normal to "stand in the way of sinners." Open sin is looked over, even in many church settings.
I'm not saying this to judge churches or people. I'm saying this out of love. I've been there myself, and I realized that just because I tried to justify something, God had never moved his stance on the situation. I pray that I'll strive to be a truly righteous person, and when I do fall into sin, I pray I won't stay there.
Basically, I'm going to strive to make sure that I don't accept those things God sees as wrong as something normal. Because I want to live a life that He sees as useful. I want to live a life that He is pleased with. I want to live a life that is seperate from this world.