Living The Good Life

Loving what the world has to offer is contrary to being in love with God.

1 Peter 3:8-12  Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.

9 Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.  

10 For the Scriptures say, "If you want to enjoy life and see many happy days, keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies.  11  Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it.  12  The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, and His ears are open to their prayers. But the Lord turns His face against those who do evil."

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Just about everybody that you know is trying to live the good life, some people like to say that they are "living the dream," there is a lot of effort made everyday to make the day that you have the best it can be. Too bad that effort isn't being put into something that will last.

This world is full of ideas about what the good life looks like and how to achieve it. Everywhere you look you see plenty of ideas on how to make it happen. The television, magazines, radio are full of programs that want to help you know what the good life looks like and the advertisers are ready to sell you all of the stuff that is required to make it happen. They feel like they are doing you a favor by letting you know how to be happy.

Let's be honest, the world has some pretty cool toys but loving what the world has to offer is contrary to being in love with God. If anybody should have been happy with the world's toys it should have been King Solomon. At first he was so in love with God that he didn't desire the world and all of it's riches and toys and so it was very commendable when he asked God for wisdom instead of riches. Too bad he left his first love and allowed the things that the world has to offer to get in the way.

1 Peter 4:1-5 So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. 2 You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. 3 You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols. 4 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. 5 But remember that they will have to face God, who will judge everyone, both the living and the dead.

The people that Peter is writing to do not have any of those good things that the world has to offer. They are poor and they are being persecuted and harassed for their departure from Judaism to follow Christ. Don't think that this is a problem for the rich and famous, we can all get caught up in the deception that the world has something meaningful to offer.

Loving what the world has to offer is contrary to being in love with God and loving God means that I need to love what he loves. I should be anxious to do what pleases him. I am finished with the lust of the old sinful life that I once lived, I have figured out that there isn't any long term enjoyment in those things, they only lead to heartache and sorrow.

Satan never shows you the discontentment and the eternal consequences that his plan has to offer. He tries so hard to keep it upbeat and positive but despite all of the spin the discontentment of living by the world's standards shows up when we loose our joy and get angry, bitterness and resentment creep in and we overindulge.

1 Peter 2:11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls.

This is not my home and the philosophies of this world are not acceptable to me as a follower of Christ. My happiness is not found in the places that this world is telling everybody to look. My happiness is found in living for the one that changed my life and gave me the riches of eternity spend with him.

Thank you Lord for changing my life here on earth and for changing my eternal destiny!

Related articles

• Playing Well With Others (diggingtheword.blogspot.com)
• Pleasing God Even In Suffering (diggingtheword.blogspot.com)
• God's Answer To An Empty Life (intouch.org)

Sell Your Possessions

Don't you have enough stuff already?

Matthew 19:21  Jesus told him, "If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me."

Matthew 6:24  "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

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In Jesus conversation with this rich man he brags that he has kept the last five commands of the ten commandments, he didn't realize that he was telling on himself, Jesus saw right through the man's words to the heart of the matter.

The rich man was very proud that he had treated people the right way as it is outlined in the last five commandments but the more important question was how was he treating God in light of the first five commands.

I guess this guy wasn't around the day that Jesus gave the sermon on the mount, in that sermon Jesus told the crowd that you have to decide where your loyalty is going to be, I have to decide if I am going to serve God or if I am going to be driven by the pursuit of stuff, I have to sure that I am not making my stuff into an idol.

Paul explained what our view of obtaining wealth and how to use our wealth should be:

1 Timothy 6:17-19  Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.  18  Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others.  19  By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.

Help me Lord to always trust in your resources rather than in the resources that I have accumulated, my resources can disappear in a flash, but yours are never ending. I pray that I will always be quick to give to those that I have the power to help.

Is It Bad? Rejoice Anyway!

I am blessed no matter how bad it looks at the moment.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the LORD! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!

The Sovereign LORD is my strength! He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights.

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You can tell a lot about a person when everything that he has is taken away from him, for some a major loss of creature comforts and a lack of resources is enough to make them sit and pity themselves, for others they can see the blessings of material goods disappear and realize that their joy is in the strength and salvation that the Lord has blessed them with. These are blessings that cannot be taken away.

This world and all the things that we feel like we need to accumulate are only temporary. We get sucked into the world's way of thinking that we need to get everything we can whether it's more toys or more food or newer clothes.

Our greatest source of joy should be our salvation, if I cannot rejoice in any circumstance then I have lost my perspective, the Lord has blessed me with the promise of a bright future in His kingdom.

I want to live by Job's motto: "The LORD gave me what I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!" 

Help me to always be joyful, Lord; you have blessed me with the assurance of your salvation, and a home for eternity with you.

Longing For A Better Country.

SCRIPTURE

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Genesis 12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country and from your family and from your father's house, into the land to which I will be your guide: 2 And I will make of you a great nation, blessing you and making your name great; and you will be a blessing: 3 To them who are good to you will I give blessing, and on him who does you wrong will I put my curse: and you will become a name of blessing to all the families of the earth.

4 So Abram went as the Lord had said to him, and Lot went with him: Abram was seventy-five years old when he went away from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their goods and the servants which they had got in Haran, and they went out to go to the land of Canaan.

6 And Abram went through the land till he came to Shechem, to the holy tree of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were still living in the land. 7 And the Lord came to Abram, and said, I will give all this land to your seed; then Abram made an altar there to the Lord who had let himself be seen by him. 8 And moving on from there to the mountain on the east of Beth-el, he put up his tent, having Beth-el on the west and Ai on the east: and there he made an altar and gave worship to the name of the Lord.

Hebrews 11:13-16  All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.

16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

OBSERVATION

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God longs for us to be obedient to him especially when he doesn’t show us all the details of how he is going to accomplish something through us. That’s where faith comes in, if he told us all the details then it wouldn’t be faith.

When I was a kid I would get in the car with my parents and go for a Sunday drive to who knows where but I always knew that we would end up back at the house.

As a child of God we should be traveling light as we pass through this strange land . It is easy to get loaded down with a bunch of stuff and the bills to match. Our countries economic disaster caught a lot of people off guard, its a shame for Christians to live so strapped down that they don't have the resources to help out people in need. There is no way that you can give alms to the poor if you are one.

APPLICATION

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I will keep on "longing for a better country—a heavenly one"

PRAYER

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Help me Lord to keep my eyes on what you have in store for me in eternity and not on all the things that get us bogged down in this life.

Just a thot’: The Egyptians were always giving their stuff away to Abram and his descendents.

What God Thinks About Your Stuff

Scripture

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Luke 12:13 – 34

Observation

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The acquisition of earthly treasure is a desire we all have from childhood, it is a desire that we must learn to suppress. I talked about the lack of respect for Jesus that the crowd had back in Luke 7 but this is unreal, a man in the crowd tries to use Jesus for financial gain. Well maybe that isn’t so unreal seeing how prevalent that thinking has become through the centuries.

The give me more attitude that this guy was living by caused him to have a grudge against his older brother. Jesus told him not to be jealous because having all the toys and money isn’t what matters:

Luke 12:15, 23 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

23 For life consists of far more than food and clothes.

These things seem pretty important to us, without them we are pretty unhappy.

Man is always tempted with wanting more, but the writer of Hebrews says that we should be content with what we have because we have something better than money, God is always going to be there for us.


Then Jesus tells us about the man who has an abundance and what he should do with it.

Luke 12:21  "Yes, every man is a fool who gets rich on earth but not in heaven."

How do I get rich in heaven? What should my abundance be used for?

Luke 12:33  Sell what you have and give to those in need. This will fatten your purses in heaven! And the purses of heaven have no rips or holes in them. Your treasures there will never disappear; no thief can steal them; no moth can destroy them.

Fatten your purses in heaven because this life and its riches are temporary,

Luke 12:19-20  And I'll sit back and say to myself, "Friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Wine, women, and song for you" '! 20 "But God said to him, 'Fool! Tonight you die. Then who will get it all?'

This is an opportunity for Jesus to show us the practical application for the message of love that he has been teaching. No better way to show love than with a gift, that is how Christ showed us his love.

1 Peter 1:4  And God has reserved for his children the priceless gift of eternal life; it is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Just like we saw in verse 33, the purses of heaven have no rips or holes in them.

Everybody likes a gift, but to the person that has unmet needs financially or physically your gift is a demonstration of Christ love and an opportunity to give a witness to how his love has affected you.


Luke 12:31   He will always give you all you need from day to day if you will make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.

It matters what we do with all of this stuff because the way we use our money and our stuff affects the kingdom of God. If our primary concern is the kingdom of God, then our attitude towards what we have been blessed with on this earth will change. We cannot look at any of these things the same as the rest of the world; my money, my stuff, my time, my vacations will all be used to build the kingdom of God. When the kingdom of God is our primary concern then we will not be lacking in our day to day needs. You may be thinking vacations? Why not use them for a mission trip.

Application

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I will use my resources of time, talent and treasure for the kingdom of God. I have been blessed with resources that I must use to show God’s love to others.

Prayer

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God I give to you my time, my vacations, my money, my stuff and my talents for you to use.