Ephesians 5:1-4 (NLT)
Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us[a] and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God.
Children are designed to imitate. For good or bad, kids do what they see the adults doing around them. (When my children were toddlers I remember learning a lot about phrases I use repeatedly, because that is what they walked around saying when they were playing…) God is our Father, and we as his children can imitate him. Of course, we can imitate the world too, as those influences are strong around us. We have to choose who and what we will look at as our example to follow.
Sexual immorality, impurity, greed… Sounds pretty much like America. Turn to any channel between 8-11pm and you are guaranteed to find plenty of television shows with obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes. That is pretty much the outline for every sitcom. These are not for you. There is something much, much better.
It’s hard to get rid of something in your life if you do not have a replacement. Here we have an alternative option when we want to participate in sinful talk: be thankful instead. You might turn a few heads at the water cooler at first, but you’ll quickly become known for being an encouraging and positive person. While people may mock that at first, you will win them over eventually because people are actually drawn to better ways of living. And I bet that if we all just took away one 30-minute TV show and used that time to write out all that we are thankful for instead, it would change our world. Try it and find out!