Living For Christ and Not The World Part One:

We have this desire in us to do what we want to do, we as people do not enjoy being told what to do.  I think that is hard for us to give up, but as we grow up and mature we begin to realize that we have to start doing things we don’t want to do.  In order to have a successful marriage one makes sacrifices for their spouse, in order to get a promotion at work one does things they don’t want to do and takes order from those above them.  Here in 1^st Peter chapter 2 Peter tells us that we must obey God, that we must crave His word, and grow in Him.  “So get rid of all malicious behavior and deceit. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with hypocrisy and jealousy and backstabbing.  You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.”(1^st Peter 2:1-3)

Peter is telling us some pretty hard truths, He is saying if you want to be a true follower then you will get rid of the sin in your life, you will desire to follow and obey God.  You are to no longer pretend to be a follower but you will follow.  You are not going to follow to make yourself look good but because you love God.  If we want God to work in our lives we must first come to desire Him, we must allow Him to work in our lives, we must look deep into His word and see what we must change in order to grow.  It’s not enough to just be good, or to try to be good we must give up our lives to God, to allow Him to work in our lives to guide and change us.  We must stop living for us and start living for God.  Many people have trouble with this because they have become accustomed to living a life of sin. They think that God is asking them to stop having fun, to give up money or a job.  We have trouble with this idea of living for God because the world around is saying live for yourself, do what is that makes you happy, when we need to doing what makes God happy.

“It takes a lot for us to comprehend God’s total hatred for sin. We make excuses like, “Yes, I am prideful at times, but everyone struggles with pride.” However, God says in Proverbs 8:13, “I hate pride and arrogance.” You and I are not allowed to tell Him how much He can hate it. He can hate and punish it as severely as His justice demands. God never excuses sin. And He is always consistent with that ethic. Whenever we start to question whether God really hates sin, we have only to think of the cross, where His Son was tortured, mocked, and beaten because of sin. Our sin. No question about it: God hates and must punish sin. And He is totally just and fair in doing so.”

Chan, Francis (2010-01-01). Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God (p. 32). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

Living For Christ and Not the World Part Two:

It is a strange thing that happens as we grow older we begin to move away from the things that we did as a child.  We no longer play games such as hide and seek with our friends, we don’t spend our time playing video games, or laser tag.  We have put those things behind and instead have placed other things ahead of them  we consider these to more important.  We have decided that we must do things differently.  In 1^st Peter 2:1-3, Peter explains that as we come to Christ we must also get rid of things in our lives; “So get rid of all malicious behavior and deceit. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with hypocrisy and jealousy and backstabbing.  You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness”  We must get rid of these sins in order to grow in Christ.  We must begin to realign our lives to be focused on God and not on the things that we may want.  We do not give these things up so that we may receive some great earthly award, we do this because as we grow in Christ we desire more and more of His grace.

Peter gives us instruction on how we build  a new  life in Christ in verses 4-5; “Come to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by the people, but he is precious to God who chose him.  And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are God’s holy priests, who offer the spiritual sacrifices that please him because of Jesus Christ.”  Peter is telling us that we must make Christ  our cornerstone, that means that we begin line up our lives with Christ.  You have to have this understanding of how buildings were built back when Peter wrote this letter, you see the first stone to be set was the cornerstone.  It was the cornerstone that they lined everything up with.  Our lives as Christians are to no longer line up with what we want our what others say but, it is to line up with the word of God, we must begin to look to Christ and study how Christ lived so that we can align our lives with His.

At some point we are going to be doing things so different than the rest of those around us. In fact we should at some point in our relationship with God come to the point where we are no longer truly thinking like the rest of the world.  Peter says it like this, “Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here. So I warn you to keep away from evil desires because they fight against your very souls.  Be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbors. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will believe and give honor to God when he comes to judge the world.”(1^st Pt 2:11-12)  We should come to a point in our lives where we have trouble understanding why people do the things they do.  Oswald Chambers said, "We are held responsible by God for the way we deal with the great mass of things that come into our lives. We all have susceptibilities in every direction; everyone is made in the same way as everyone else; consequently it is not true to say we cannot understand why some people like to devote themselves to pleasure, to races and dancing, etc. If we do not understand it, it is because part of our nature has become atrophied. Whatever one human being can do, either in the way of good or bad, any human being can do."(Oswald Chambers)