We live in a world that is quickly becoming something that I believe it was never meant to be. There are people who live a life of doing what is wrong and yet is spoken of as being right and even vice versa.

Obviously this is something that feels completely beyond us at times. The world, at large, is just something more than we feel we can grasp. But even in this world we have a calling, an expectation if you will, that can in fact bring change amidst this chaos.

James 4:17 in the passion translation says, "So if you know of an opportunity to do the right thing today, yet you refrain from doing it, you are guilty of sin."

This verse shook me a bit.

The reality that's held here for believers is something that is of utmost importance.

We have a responsibility to be the ones who walk out right living under the relationship that we have been brought into.

James is so serious about this, especially since sin is brought into the mix here.

Sin is what once held us at a great distance from the God we love and serve. It's a big deal that just because we don't take the opportunity to do what is right that we now are looking at that vast separation from God again.

"Don't cha know (I'm sure James wrote that with a Minnesota accent in mind) that flirting with the world's values places you at odds with God?" (James 4:17)

When we don't live in the opportunities to do what is right we are becoming like the world. We are, like James puts it, flirting with the values of the place that we are called to change, not be like.

If I am looking at life through the wrong lens, I can get overwhelmed. I can be confused and think "How on earth am I going to do the right thing all the time?!" But one thing that I think is important that we grasp from this scripture are the words "so if you know of an opportunity".

Don't stress about the things that bypass you that you have no idea how to handle. But let your knowledge of opportunities be taken advantage of for His glory.

The good that can be done, the right living that we are called to, the opportunities that are before us are all so important to God.

In those opportunities is where we find our friends, share salvation, understand God's mysteries and so much more. These opportunities are Kingdom opportunities. They are more than just instances that should be glanced over. They are available to us for God's heart to be portrayed through the world, that sin should lose its power once and for all.

"So do the right thing today."