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)