Do not love the World

1 John 2:15-17 "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For ALL that is in the world-- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-- is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides FOREVER."

This is a challenge for me. The world sometimes seems like it has it all, that I'm missing out on all the "fun" stuff, and that because I love Jesus, I am just plain weird. But Christians are NOT OF THE WORLD. No wonder the world treats us weird! We don't belong here! In John 15:19 Jesus says "If you were of the world, the world would love it's own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." Does that mean everyone in the world hates us? Not exactly. But the father of sin, the one behind it all, hates us. Literally. He is totally against us, and he will do anything to get rid of us! Does that mean that we should stiff-arm everybody in the world except for people at church?Of course not! We are supposed to be lights in the darkness. We need to be in the world so we can influence the people around us. But we MUST make sure we are in the world but not OF the world. If we are in the world too much and not staying in the scriptures, it can slowly grow on us and grab our hearts away from the Lord. We can grow to love the world, and our lives, and that is NOT OK. Mark 8:35 says "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it." We cannot try to keep our lives at any cost. If our lives are lived for ourselves, we will lose our lives. But if we live them for our Savior, He will let us keep them and then something will actually come of it! So will you "have fun" in life, do whatever you want, or will you live for Christ and do something for Him and through Him that will count for eternity?