"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love - not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us."
(1 John 4:4, 7-12)
"For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God...
And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God's Son does not have life...
We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and he is eternal life."
(1 John 5:4, 11-12, 19-20)
Today I was going through my FB minifeed (because I hadn't done so in a long time and was bored) and found myself being a "hater", envious, and self-righteous. As I was looking at statuses/pictures about: Vegas, Coachella, hangovers, parties, brand-name shoes/bags/clothes, bandwagon 9er fans, enhanced self-portraits, fancy cars, new stuff, traveling adventures, pretty hairstyles/makeup, clubbing, concerts, gym rats, perfect bodies, etc....the list goes on, I was thinking things like:
"Dang, I want that. That looks fun. Why is she so frikken pretty. How do they come up with the money to live like this?!"
And then to comfort myself, I began thinking, "Well they don't know that all this stuff, this lifestyle, is a waste of time. They don't know Jesus, and I do, and I know what I am REALLY living for. Unlike them. They aren't really satisfied with this." I was thankful that God had changed me to desire Him and thankful that I am not living for the wrong things anymore.
But yet, I always need to be reminded of how fallen I am as a sinner and the grace that God shows me. Even as a Christian, I can be so self-centered at times, and use my pride in my religion to comfort me when I begin to desire the things that this world offers. Of course the desires are still there - I aint gonna lie. To relive the "good ol' days" is tempting. My life now is nowhere as appealing/exciting as it used to be from the outside perspective. I do feel a lot less....."cool" haha, and more like a "square" if you feel me...
When I compare myself to friends who are still caught up in all that, in order to not feel any lesser, I get self-righteous, comparing my "goodness" to them and resting in the assurance that I have eternal life. My "being apart from the world" works in my favor when I think like that. But then God convicts me that I only have eternal life because Jesus came to this world as a sacrifice for all my sins of the past and my sins now which includes my self-righteousness as a Christian. He is the one that has revealed truth to me so I can be free from the world's control. He is the one whose standards I have to compare to, not the people around me. He is the one who won the battle and claimed the victory. He is the example to me on how to love a fallen world. In all this, I have done nothing and I would never be enough to deserve his goodness.
Instead of hating the world because they don't know the truth, we need to be loving the world because they need to know the truth. It's so easy for me to to be caught up in my Christian bubble and watch the world deteriorate without doing anything because I'm safe in here. Now that God has given us understanding through Jesus to know him, now that we know what it's like to be loved by Him, we get to fully express His love in us to everyone else. (What a privilege! We are mere people, and God's love is wider, higher, deeper than we can ever imagine, yet he can still use us to fully express His love? Whaaaat.) We are no better than them because we have Jesus, we are still sinners saved by grace. But we put our faith in one who is incomparably better than all of us and that's where our hope lies. Jesus gave us the choice now to not be influenced by the world, but with that came the choice to influence the world through Him. What are we waiting for?
Also, just wanted to share that our very own brother PIERCE HAO shared an awesome testimony this past Sunday about the New Year's 2012 theme: giving Christ the first place. He talked about the cost of putting God first and how it's not easy...But forreals, Hao needs to speak more often because his public speaking skills are LEGIT! Talk about eloquence.
this was an awesome read. thumbs up.
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