i start to fit in.

My greatest desire should not be to fit in but rather fear that I "fit in".

In a book I'm reading, "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper, he goes on to say:

"I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in.  I start to love what others love.  I start to call earth "home."  Before you know it, I am calling luxuries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do.  I begin to forget the war.  {What war you ask? The war for peoples souls.}  I don't think much about people perishing.  Missions and unreached peoples drop out of my mind.  I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace.  I sink into a secular mindset that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do."

*My emphasis added.

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.  If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own.  As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.  That is why the world hates you.

-John 15:18-19

Later in the book of John, chapter 17, Jesus prays this prayer over His disciples: “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified."

Sanctified means to be set apart for a sacred purpose.  Once we become a Christ follower, by repenting [i.e. turning away from the idol of ourselves and our selfish desires] this life is no longer our own.  It is now time for Christ to live through us.  He is who we live to serve, not the idols the world puts in front of us, or even more tempting the idol of ourselves.

I stop dreaming about the triumphs of His grace.  I start to fit in.

It seems I soon forget.

He is jealous for me, love like a hurricane and I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.

Set apart for a sacred purpose.  I don't want to start to fit in.