What I’m Listening To: Forever and Ever, Amen by Randy Travis

Welcome back to week two of my month long weekly devotional series! As always, if you’re new, be sure to check out my previous posts in the series. The intro post has some additional information about our September of Peace devotionals. 

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 

                   ~ 1 John 2:15 (NIV)

That can be a tough pill to swallow, that even loving the world just a little means that we don’t love God. That’s not to say that we can’t like, or enjoy the things of the world; rather that we should be wary to not let them consume us and become our idols. This is made much easier if we remember two things that God tells us. One, that the world hates us because we are not like it. Yes, God makes it explicitly clear in John that the world is not merely unfeeling, but actually despises us. 

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 

                      ~ John 15:19 (NIV)

Two, that not only has God chosen us out of the world, but that we are actually not of the world the same that He is not. 

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 

                     ~ John 17:16 (ESV)

It is because of our likeness to God that the world does not like us. Why should we love anything that hates us for being like our Saviour? Therefore, we should rebel against the world, and turn to God, that the world might be pushed away from us through the love of Christ. 

Prayer Prompt: That we might be granted the strength to turn away from the Faustian offers the world attempts to bribe us with, and instead turn our face toward our Redeemer and the promise of Heaven.