Wake Up Call

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 desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. ~1 John 1:15-17

There is nothing in life that will sustain you besides a deep and abiding joy in Jesus Christ.  Everything else will fail at some point.  This is not to say that without Christ you walk around looking for ways to off yourself.  In fact, I was quite a happy heathen before meeting Christ.  But all that the world has to offer is fleeting.  Life is but a vapor, and we waste so much of it chasing after stupid stuff.  Whether that be money, fame, power, professional respect, houses, cars, you name it.  We chase after all these things and then act surprised when they fail us.  Even if we attain them, they will fail us.  Just look at the news. The stock market is crashing, the world economy is in the toilet, war is raging, and yet most of us have our heads in the sand pretending everything will just blow over.  Worse than that, rather than repenting of our worldliness, the church goes on looking and acting just like the rest of the world.

Recently the governor of Texas held a prayer rally.  If you haven't read the transcript, you can read it here.  While I commend the governor for praying and  I encourage everyone to pray for our country, do not expect the answer to look a certain way, specifically when praying for a blessing.  God's blessings always bring us closer to Him.  And what we often consider a blessing (wealth, power, influence, comfort, food, etc) are not always, and usually aren't ever, the things that bring us to Him.  So by all means pray that He would bless our country, but understand that the blessing we need to be seeking is Him, and not His stuff.

We don't need our economy to recover, we don't need comfort, we don't need all the stuff we chase after so fervently, we need the church to repent of their worldliness, grow a spine, and run hard after Jesus.  He does not care about our comfort.  He is not consumed with our safety.  How foolish are we to place our hopes in anything except Him.  And for everyone who just nodded their heads in agreement, I'm talking to you.  We express great faith in Christ and then live as if He doesn't exist.  We say our hope is in Him, and yet we run after and chase after all the things the world has to offer, we just do it with the Christian language dressing up our actions.  Repent.  Turn to Jesus.  He is jealous after His own name, and He will share His glory with no one, for He is that which is ultimate in the universe.  He alone is good.  He alone is holy.  He alone is righteous.  He alone is lovely.  He alone is worthy.  And He alone is coming back and He alone will receive worship.  Stop acting like the world, and live a life set apart for Christ.