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1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. - Romans 12:1-2 MSG
Does your life look odd to the people who have always known you? Does it seem as if it's completely different from the way that you grew up? Do people look at the way you live your life and think that you're foolish? Is it hard for them to understand why you do the things that you do?
This is what it means to truly give your life to God. Everything gets flipped upside down. You no longer conform to the culture around you, but rather to the will of God, which permeates every area of your life. And to anyone who is not following Him, your life won't make any sense.
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.1 Cor 2:14
Whenever you give your life to Christ it should look foolish to anyone not following him.
If your life makes sense to people not following Christ, it’s because you’re not following Him either.
People who aren’t following Christ with all their heart shouldn’t understand anything about you. It should confuse them. If your life makes sense to someone who doesn’t care about God, it’s because you don’t care about God either.
If someone all of a sudden drops their job, their family, everything they've ever worked for to follow someone they just met, society might consider checking them into a mental facility. Or see a therapist at the very least, someone to talk "sense" into them. However, if we read Matthew 4, this is exactly what Peter did when Jesus called him to be a disciple. It says he left everything "at once".
18 Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee. He saw two brothers. They were Simon (his other name was Peter) and Andrew, his brother. They were putting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. 19 Jesus said to them, “Follow Me. I will make you fish for men!” 20 At once they left their nets and followed Him. - Matthew 4:18-20
Peter wasn't a bum on the street with nothing to lose. He was at work when he met Jesus. He and his brother Andrew had a fishing business. We also know that Peter had a wife and most likely children as well. I'm sure there were also friends, parents and hobbies that apparently he didn't feel the need to mention when he had Mark record his account of the gospel. In Matthew 19, Peter confirms that he left everything to follow Jesus.
Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” - Matthew 19:27
Peter didn't have an iPhone. Planes and cars didn't exist yet. Peter left immediately, not knowing when, or if, he would see any of these people again. His life turned completely upside down. He left his career, his family, everything. He completely laid his life down at the feet of Jesus.
Peter lived in a society that claimed God, yet they hated Jesus. They even said that He performed miracles by the power of Satan. I'm sure His disciples were labeled as what we would today call "a cult".
So I guess the question is: has anyone asked if you were in a cult lately? Do they not understand the life you live because it’s the complete opposite of theirs?
If the answer is no, it’s probably because you follow the same god (emphasis on the small g) they do.
If you were following Jesus, anyone without His spirit on the inside of them wouldn't recognize you. Neither you, or your life, should look the same. This is because it's no longer you living it. It's His spirit living through you.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
Once God takes over your life, it should be completely upside down.
A life that is upside down to the world, is right side up to God.