Monday, October 02, 2006

Sorry, I've been busy lately.

I have been occupied with other things over this past week and I haven't had much time left for JimmyBob's Place. Part of it is that I started a MySpace account, a Xanga account, a Yahoo Groups account, and another Youth Pastor's Forum. The other parts of it are that Survivor started up again on TV, for my birthday I got "Rockstar Table Tennis" for my video game system, and I have been really tired. One night I even fell asleep at this computer.

Anyway, tonight I was thinking about a Scripture that I shared in a sermon I preached this past Sunday. It is found in 1 John 2 and it is verses 15-17. They say. . .

"Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever."

I never thought about the fact that this world is fading away. Like most people, I stop at the parts about eyes, flesh, and pride.

These verses tell us that there are two forces at work against each other. There is "this evil world" and there is "the will of God."

There are two offers that we must consider. We can choose to crave the things of this world or we can crave the will of God.

There are only two outcomes (we can assume according to these verses in particular and verified through others) of our choosing one craving over the other. If we choose to crave the things that the world has to offer, we will eventually suffer eternal death. If we crave the will of God and do it, we will live forever.

Now the part that stuck out at me was that this world and it's cravings are already fading away. They are soon going to be dissolved and vanish. God is already working His will and the end of the world (as we know it) is soon to come. It makes sense that if we crave doing the Father's will that we can go on living forever, because God's will is eternal. It also makes sense that if we choose to satisfy the cravings of this world that we will eventually perish along with those things that are even now fading away.

God allows us to identify ourselves with either one. It is up to us. I can't see any other way to interpret these verses. They make sense to me. More than anything else, they speak hope into me. That my God is moving and working things out. That I should stay in love with Him and trust Him over all other influences in this life. Even if I mess up bad, I should repent and draw close to Jesus, who loves me more than I can imagine, because it is my alignment with His side that leads to eternal life.

What do you think?

5 comments:

ruthrap said...

i love the way you simplify the message, Jimmybob, you make it plain and simple to understand.......straight and forward. when you stop and think about it, there's nothing really complicated about God's word, we complicate it, trying to see into it things that aren't there. We have to be either with Him or with the world, there's no in between.

JimmyBob said...

You nailed it ruthrap. My thoughts exactly.

Anonymous said...

I have been busy too. Sorry I have not commented. I to think that we either need to chose to follow Christ and to live for Him alone or we are following Satan and deceiving ourselves in to thinking that we are ok. Sandy

ruthrap said...

just dropped by to say hi and how ya doin'! have a good day!

JimmyBob said...

I'm back, hopefully. Things have really been busy.