From the YouVersion Devotional, “Daily Power, Day 7” by Craig Groschel

When I was growing up, it seemed like every adult I knew smoked cigarettes. I never realized the effect it had on me until I went away to college. After being away for several weeks, when I came back home, I thought, “Man, this place smells like smoke! Wow, I never noticed that before.” Then I kind of got used to it again and didn’t think about it until I got back to my dorm Sunday night.

When I walked into my dorm room, my roommate said, “Dude, get out of here! That’s rank! Where have you been—inside a chimney?”

Then it dawned on me. For the past eighteen years, I’d lived in this smoke-filled environment and didn’t realize the toll it had taken on me. I had been breathing in this secondhand smoke, this poison, and it was affecting me and I didn’t even know it.

So often our culture affects our souls the same way. We breathe in secondhand toxins that infiltrate our minds and hearts and make us sluggish. After a while we don’t realize it and are just going with the flow, doing what everyone else around us is doing, not what God wants us to do.

If you want to build a stronger relationship with Christ, you have to live apart. You have to follow his ways and not the crowd. You have to recognize the impact that those around you are having on your faith.

Power Lift: Father, thank you for calling me to a life that’s set apart from the world. Today help me see the ways I have been affected by spiritual pollution.

My Thoughts

I grew up in a household in which my mom smoked constantly. I wasn’t aware of the effect on my health until I left home and was not around smoke anymore. My asthma was definitely exacerbated by the presence of smoke, and I am still really allergic to any hint of smoke in the air around me. Thank goodness that God has taken care of me!

The smoke I was around could be seen, smelled (in the air and on my clothing) and was a real problem for my physical health. But the things that I allow into my mind and the people I associate with have an effect on my spiritual life. It is my choice to distance myself from harmful things spiritually, just as I would not stay around smoke because of the detrimental effects on my lungs. Being around people and taking part in things that do not help me grow spiritually is harms my spiritual growth. We are to be in the world but we shouldn’t do as the world does or begin to think and act as they do. I can love people without accepting their non-Biblical beliefs.