IN IT BUT NOT PART OF IT! 2/26/12

HAVE YOU ever held a membership in something, but was not an active member? Jim has on occasion, sent money to organizations because he believed in what they stood for. Most time he would receive a membership card! His membership did not require that he do anything or be anything, except contribute money, occasionally.

SOMETIMES we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place because of what is in the world. The scriptures clearly tells us that we are in the world but not part of the world. Sounds poetic when you say it, but living it is complicated, and needs to be spelled out so we know where we stand.

WE DON’T have to shop in a store if we don’t want to. We don’t have to condone what the store sells or who sells it. We can choose where we go and who we go with. Christians hold to a biblical standard that is not normally acceptable to the world. By the same token the world doesn’t much care about the Christian standards we live by, and believe we will shop and buy from their stores anyway.

WE GO TO SISTERS once in a while and there is one store, that way in the back sells trinkets and obscene stuff, but in the front of the store it is clever and easy on the eye. I went once into the back and have never entered their store again.

I DON’T CARE if the hardest of all sinners work in a store, for me to shop, nor do I care where they have been, but I don’t need to shop in a store where their sins are flaunted before me as being normal and acceptable for all the world to see. My place is not to judge anyone in the world. My position is to keep myself from being caught up in political correctness where I find I am condoning what they do whether in secret or out in the open.

I AM NOT condemning anyone or saying that I am better than anyone. “For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war.” 2 Corinthians 10:3 I am merely stating that as a Christian I must keep myself from becoming a part of the world that I live in. It is not easy! It is true that if I carried this to the level of not living in the world because of all the sinners around me, I would die of starvation and go naked. I am free to shop where I want!

“BUT YOU are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.” 1 Peter 2:9-10

PETER is clearly defining who we are. “We are aliens in the world and are to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against our soul. Maintain good conduct among the world, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God in the day of visitation.” 1 Peter 2:11-12

WHEN I see an advertisement on TV where the spokespersons are openly immoral I mute and go the menu. Not that I don’t love the sinner as God has asked me to do, but because I will not allow myself to be put in a position of accepting their life style because of the product they are selling. I don’t watch movies that star those who’s private lives are immoral.

GOD SAYS we are to set ourselves apart. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away and the lust of it, but He who does the will of God abides for ever.” 1 John 2:15-17 Oh Lord; help me to understand! By Jane Ann Crenshaw 2/24/12