This is a guest post from Nicole Unice. Interested in contributing to BeDeviant.com? Check out the details here.

Last Friday evening, a casual outdoor party in my neighborhood culminated with a half-dozen girls sprawled across my living room. As they compared splits and talked about the upcoming school year, I held skinny feet in the air as each attempted the perfect handstand. I remarked to the gaggle that I thought I could still break out a split if not for the dress I was wearing. A lanky blond with hair as long and straight as her nine-year-old legs leaned into me, whispering conspiratorially: “Oh go ahead, it’s just us girls.”

Just us girls. The living room could hardly contain the beauty, joy, and potential of those women in the making. I marveled at being invited to witness such life.

I love being part of a generation that esteems women like never before and passes that on to these girls. Women have reached new heights of success in every arena. The world is a better place because of our achievement and innovation. Yet often our complex nature and this broken world crash together like the girls falling out of their handstands. We are all head bumps and soul bruises.

I wonder what will become of those free-spirited females as their lives expand beyond the cul-de-sac and elementary school, when the world’s messages threaten their joy. My night with the girls gave me reason to pause and think about what voices they’ll hear as they become women:

• Work a job that fulfills, raise kids that behave, and save time to perfect your tennis stroke and keep your hair highlights bright.
• Talk intelligently about politics, literature, social causes–and the cover headlines of US magazine.
• Embrace your maturity with grace while slathering on anti-aging cream and spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars achieving the natural look.
• Be a great lover to your husband and devoted to your family, but stay “hot” and maintain your own bank account, just in case.
• And if you are under 21? Well, then, you should know how to create a nonprofit, letter in three sports, and toss around sex as casually as the next fashion.
• Under 18? Know the square root of 121, the calories in the yogurt you ate for breakfast, and remember “self first” so that you don’t get hurt by anyone else.
• And no matter your age, maintain hundreds of casual relationships and deny the truth that you feel lonelier and less known then ever before.

On one level, we don’t believe the voices. We recognize that they are superficial, unrealistic. But our exposure to our ambivalent culture affects us deeply, creating in us confusion about how we are to live.

In the noise of this crowd, we owe it to our mothers, our daughters, sisters and friends to seek the voice of truth—the voice of God. Where is God’s voice and what—if anything—does he have to say to women?

As Christian leaders, we want to believe that God speaks into this mess, but sometimes it’s hard for even us to pick out the real gems of truth in the costume jewelry of our society.

So how do we do it? How do we point women toward the voice of God in today’s culture? When a woman, steeped in these cultural messages, walks into your church or social event for the first time, what do you think she’s looking for—and how do we provide it?

This is a guest post by Kevin Eagle. Are you interested in contributing to BeDeviant.com? Check out the details here.

I’ve tried in all my geeky wisdom to get my wife to use an RSS reader to aggregate all of the blogs that she is now following, but much to my chagrin, she still insists on reading each one individually.  Well, the fact of the matter is, I don’t really care, because she still shares good stuff with me from time to time.

Case in point, we were sitting in front of the TV on Saturday night and she speaks up to say that I needed to read the blog post of one of her favorite bloggers (http://www.mycharmingkids.net) from that day.

Well this morning, I finally got around to it, and one sentence struck me as profound. “God cares about my character, not my comfort.” (from http://tinyurl.com/yawoob)

I’ve written recently about my lack of focus and uncertainty about the potential for 2010.  What’s really going on is that there are so many things in my life that I’m uncertain about right now, I’m swimming in the “what ifs” and continually asking “what should I do?”

I’m very uncomfortable right now…with questions about my ministry, with questions about my career choice and direction, with questions about my finances, with questions about my family life.  But this one statement made me stop and think, God wants me to be uncomfortable, because that’s when I can trust him most, and that is when I have the opportunity to build on my character.  God cares more about my character than my comfort because comfort is a human attribute, a human longing, a human emotion.

Character is who I really am, and who I really am reflects who God created me to be and reveals the ways in which I am created in His image.

So my response?  Worship and praise!  Praise God for my discomfort!  I worship Him with my disconcerted life by obedience and my quest for His perfect will.  He is shaping me through these experiences, because I certainly can’t shape myself to perfect all aspects of my life.

So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.  ~1 Peter 4:19~

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
I will praise my God to my last breath!  ~Psalm 104:33~

Originally posted here.

This is a guest post from Sam Mahlstadt. Interested in contributing to BeDeviant.com? Read more here.

My wife and I packed up our stuff last April, and moved to Winston-Salem, NC to help build One Church. When we arrived, we knew that the church’s September 13th launch date was quickly approaching, and we jumped right into strategic planning meetings. With another couple, the four of us made up the leadership team and bore the responsibility of birthing a new local church that would reach those who were overlooked and dismissed.

We were all transplants from Iowa, who had given up our comforts and safety nets to see this goal take place. A bit of pressure (read: fear) accompanied this responsibility.

The four of us met semiweekly to brainstorm, strategize and collaborate on ideas that would ultimately create the systems that facilitated the church. The meetings took on more weight as September 13th continued to stalk us. When we ran into a few consecutive dead-ends where we were expecting momentum builders and energy boosts, we had to answer some hard questions. We had to examine our efforts, and re-access what God was asking us to accomplish.

It caused us to think differently about our approach to creating the church. We were doing a lot of work for God, but we seemed to be distant from the work God was doing in us, and ultimately through us. With this realization, we stopped our meeting in its seemingly God-forsaken tracks, and began to pray as a group.

It was a time to refocus our minds and renew our hearts. That moment has served as a defining step in the direction and personality of the church we lead, as well as our approach to the church. I believe every company, organization, or ministry has these moments where a break is simply the only answer. Not more meetings or planning, but rest.

This is a guest post by Jeremy Anderberg. Jeremy is a senior at Drake University. He loves Jesus, reading, writing, coffee and big cities. He has a vision to change the world using the gifts and passions that God has given him. Interested in guest blogging for Deviant? Register here and fire away!

I’m in a class at Drake University called Consumer Behavior. It’s a marketing class. We were talking the other day about why people conform to their surrounding culture. The second item on our list caught my eye. It suggested that we (the consumer) fold to social pressures because we have a natural fear of deviance. I will admit that the first thing I thought of was Justin’s blog, Be Deviant. The name itself seems to suggest that we should in fact be deviating. But why? Why should we stray from our instincts?

Deviance simply means “departing from the norm”. It can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing. Older generations tend to have a negative view of deviance, while younger generations are more cynical by nature and actually respect some level of deviance much more than blind conformity (hence this blog). I tend to agree with that last part. But again, why should be striving to go against the grain?

It’s easy actually. Scripture tells us to. Romans 12:2 says “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

There’s a ton to unpack there, but I’ll keep it simple. This world has a certain pattern:

• A pattern of sex, money, celebrity worship and selfishness. Those are the obvious ones.
• There are also more subtle patterns though. Apathy, relativity, “tolerance”, laziness, fear of risk, etc. The list can go on and on.
• We generally know what these things are. It doesn’t necessarily need to be flashed in front of us.

Paul, the writer of Romans, tells us to deviate from these norms. He tells us to depart from them, and turn to the pattern of Jesus instead. He even tells us how to do it. We have to be transformed by renewing our minds. Following Jesus is a thinking lifestyle.

So, you may be asking, how do I do that? It’s interesting that this whole topic of deviance is actually leading to more questions than concrete answers. I believe that’s actually part of it. I can give you one suggestion though:

Believe that Jesus is Lord, and do what He did. If you follow His example, you will automatically renew your mind and be a deviant in the process.

Are you with me? Are you ready to be a deviant? Are you willing to look a little different than the world?

The following is a guest post from Dan Bryan. Dan’s a good friend from seminary and budding blogger. Check out Dan’s Twitter at Twitter.com/_danbryan and give him a follow. Enjoy the post, and let Dan know what you think in the comments!

My wife and I participated in something called ‘Earth Hour’s this past Saturday night – read more here www.earthhour.org. There were a variety of participants ranging from regular people like me to the famous Big Ben clock tower in the U.K. In my city Chicago, last year’s participation resulted in a reduction of electricity use of 7% over that hour – the equivalent of taking about 1 million cars off the road or planting 158 acres of trees. All good things right?

This was hardly an act of heroism – in fact we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves (NCAA tourney games ending in time helped my activism as well!).  This picture pretty much sums up our experience:

Armed with some candles and a couple glasses of wine, we did our part, staring out our 9th floor window to see which neighbors were participating, chatting till 9:30 until we could make something in the oven (it’s electric and after an hour we got pretty hungry – we like to eat).

So, why should you care? Well, I found some of the chatter leading up to earth hour incredibly fascinating. No huge buzz, but around Chicago there were billboards, short news stories, and of course I watched my Twitter/Facebook accounts. Some of the commentary leading up to 8:30 PM CST really struck me; I heard several statements like this one (I’m paraphrasing):

“I’ve almost got every light on, a few more to go and I’ll be ready for earth hour.  Maybe I’ll even buy more!”

I could go on, but I won’t. You get the idea. Whatever the reason, some people didn’t agree with the premise of earth hour – reasonable. But, why would you choose to respond in that way? I’m not a card-carrying member of WWF (the organization behind earth hour and NOT the “world wrestling federaton”) – but I agree that we are a culture of users – I am a wasteful user. Conservation isn’t a big value for us; we use more than we need all the time and responses like the ones above only validate that point.

I’m not interested in debating the premise of earth hour; what I’m interested in is this deep seeded urge in all of us to be contrary. In fact I want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt – they probably have great reasons for dissenting; but because of the way they went about it I doubt anyone is listening.  How am I responding when I disagree with something? I might have the best reasons, carefully crafted, scientifically ‘proven’ even – but does that give me license for responding in a way that only escalates conflict and division – or in this case adds to the problem? I propose that it doesn’t.

My question to myself and to you – what are the ‘earth hours’ you’ve responded to lately? How did you do? Is my posture one of conversation and relationship with the world around me? Or have I taken a stand only to be sending a message I never intended?