influences

I just got a new CD by this group that I heard of recently, Casting Crowns. (The CD is also called Casting Crowns.) It has this song on it, "The Voice of Truth", that goes something like this: "Out of all the voices calling out to me, I choose to listen and believe the Voice of Truth." Now isn't that the truth. We have so many influences every single day and whole lot of them are not good! There's the obvious ones that your parents are always warning you about, like movies and song lyrics, but there's other stuff too. For example I am very influenced by brands. For example, I got this scarf that looks like a Burberry for $3! Real Burberrys cost about $250. I should know because I went there when we were in Chicago just to drool over all the stuff. Another example: I like Coke better than Pepsi because the label is classier. Stupid maybe but it's true. Being influenced by brands is not particularily good but so far I have not spend outrageous amounts of money on anything, partially because I don't have outrageous amounts of money!

Other influences are stuff that's meant to influence you, like ads with beautiful size 0 models. Then influences like the peanut butter-chocolate ice cream sitting in my freezer come in and override the be-a-skinny-stick influences. Speaking of skinny, I have noticed some people at the gym every once in a while who are more than a little overweight. I really admire their guts, because if I were them the gym would be my worst nightmare because it is jam packed full of skinny fit people who stare at the fatso's who are strolling on the treadmill while they are sprinting with a dumbell in each hand.

So anyway, the point is that we are extremely influenced by all the things around us (even the weather--notice how a gray day makes you grumpy?) but there's only one thing that we should be influenced by: God. The simplest way of being influenced by God is by being influenced by what the Bible says. Sadly there are so many interpretations of what the Bible means (like the question of baptism...) but a good portion of it is very clear, like: thou shalt not kill.

Jeremiah has a good post on interpreting what the Scripture says about infant baptism:
http://www.jdragz.blogspot.com
However he could be a little more firm with the part about whether it's OK to use baptism as a dedication. You can read my thoughts on that in the comments.

More blog news: Amber is back! Check it out at:
http://www.amberwheeler.blogspot.com

Advice for the day: Buy the Casting Crowns CD instead of whatever you were planning to get. It will be a much better influence on you and may even lead to blog topics!