In the process of allowing the Lord to remove all the doctrines of men out of me; teaching me what it really means to seek first the kingdom and His righteousness; seeing the fruit of and all these things will be added unto you; and learning what real love looks like, I found the hardest thing to let go of, to surrender to the Lord, was my culture.

Being born an American, living in America for all but nine years of my life, I was through and through an American. This is true for everyone of us when it comes to our culture. My husband is African, He was born in Africa, He is an African, He has culture that is different than mine. He can’t help he is African, anymore than I can help that I am American.

Cultures are so much a part of who we are, we do not even recognize how cultural we are, until another culture invites us to think different, respond differently or even accept some realities that are different than our culture has taught us. The kingdom of God is a culture and it is not American, nor African; it is not Asian nor Australian; it is not European or Arabian; it is not Middle Eastern nor is it South American.

The Kingdom of God is its own culture and our invitation is to deny our culture and embrace the Kingdom culture. James calls culture the world. In James 4:4 it says, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

A friend according to James is someone you are aligned with, loyal to, shaped by, have shared values with. Now think of your culture as your closest friend. The hardest person to lose is a close friend, but the Lord is inviting us to lose our close friendship with the world, or our culture for in many ways, it is not the culture of the kingdom.

The world is is in opposition to God, so we have to chose do we want to be a friend of God or a friend of our culture. It is an allegiance question and when cultures clash, we have to chose who we want as a friend, who we are aligning with. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org