Vicki Parr reflects on the importance of being true to yourself and God.

Vicki Parr

Hearing other people's personal experiences and journey can help encourage us in our walk. Knowing others have overcome in life helps us to face the challenges in front of us.

I'd like to share with you something Vicki Parr spoke about. I interviewed her on Fusion, my Cross Rhythms radio show. Fusion encourages young girls to rise up and discover who they were made to be.

Vicki is the administrator for Christian Growth International, a network of churches throughout the UK and abroad. She attends Skylark Church and is married to Josiah who is the Youth Pastor there. She is also the mother to two beautiful little girls.

Vicki shared an important reminder about peer pressure and the choices we make every day.

She said, "When I was younger, I thought that once I grew up and got out of my rather awkward teenage years that I would be able to escape the thing that I struggled with the most - peer pressure. I thought I would be free to be the woman of God I was called to be, free from people's opinions and expectations. But now, in my late twenties, I have a really energetic three year old daughter and it's just as hard.

I've realised that at every age there is some sort of battle, or thing that we have to choose to overcome. There is some sort of lesson to learn. My daughter is at the age where she wants to understand everything. She loves to point out things and ask "What's that?", which is rather cute, until we're sitting on a bus and she does it to a random stranger on the street. I then have to reply with, "That's a woman" and quickly move to another topic.

She also loves to watch TV and there's this particular programme that my husband and I have decided we would prefer her to not watch. There isn't anything particularly evil about it, in fact, most of the mums of our church let their kids watch it. For us, it's just the attitude of the main character we don't like; they are rude to their parents, whine most of the time, are rather grumpy to their siblings and they're not the nicest person in the world.

After seeing my daughter's attitude change after watching this programme we quickly came to the decision that it would be easier on us and better for her if we chose to not watch it. That sounds easy enough, right? Well, life went on as usual and we didn't really think much about it, until my daughter once again began to become a little bit more demanding, a little bit ruder, a little bit whinier and just a little bit more irritating than usual. After questioning, or should I say, blaming my husband, we discovered that nothing had changed. No, he hadn't allowed her to eat anything sugary and no he hadn't allowed her to watch anything that I would consider naughty. So we just couldn't figure out what caused this attitude change. It wasn't until bath time that evening that as we got her ready for bed, I saw the culprit standing right there. She had the undies on from that show that we just didn't want her to watch. I realised that they were undies that had come from nursery that they had lent to us and instead of returning them, as I usually do, they just got swept into the usual routine of our life. This was done without knowing or realising we had just embraced something that wasn't of our family, which wasn't our values and I had allowed it not just into my life, but also into my family's life as well.

It made me think of Romans 12:1-2 from The Message which says, 'So here's what I want you to do, God helping you, take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life, and place it before God as an offering, embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God; you will be changed from the inside out, readily recognise what he wants from you and quickly respond to it, unlike the culture around you always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, and develops well-formed maturity in you'.

It's so easy to tell the little things in your life that aren't honouring God, whether it's the music you listen to, or the skirt you might be wearing a little bit too high, or the bad boy that you really like, but just really isn't that good for you. Even now, at my age, I know there are things in my life that I need to give back to God; the times I get angry and just refuse to pray; the times I don't forgive because it just hurts too much to think about it, or the attitude I'm having towards my family, which is a result of me being tired. In these times when these "undies" creep into your life, before you know it, your personality, your attitude and even your relationships change.

The awesome thing is that the verse in Romans says that if we fix our attention on God, then we will be changed. There isn't a maybe or a possibly in that. It says that we will be, highlighted in capital letters, changed from the inside out.

I love that God is always there for us, that He loves us unconditionally and no matter how many times we go back to Him asking for forgiveness, that He will always embrace us. He is the rock and the fortress that we need.

I know that there will be times that I discover something more serious than my daughter wearing some undies with a TV character on them. I know teenage years can be hard and sometimes a scary time of your life to figure it out, but in this time, know that God is there and you are free to fix your attention on Him and for Him to love you no matter what."