“And the world passeth away and the lust there of.” I John 2:17

“For the form of this world passeth away.” I Corinthians 7:31

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” John 17:16

I detect a note of cynicism when I hear people say,” It’s the same
old same old”. But what do you suppose is going to be new about the New
Year? Although many things change, human nature stays the same.
It’s difficult not to be cynical on a steady diet of plastic
politicians, lying leaders, corporate corruption, sick celebrity worship,
and a confused, compromised Church. Where are the real people?
When little men admire their own long shadows it means two things.
It’s getting late, and they’re moving away from the light.
Two vital marks of truly knowing Jesus Christ, and living in His
victory (a rarity these days) are: those who know Him know it, and, in the
inward light of that knowledge, see through the falsity and emptiness of
this “present evil world”. Galatians 1:4
In all the confusion around us, God has a clear purpose for His own.
For His glory and their supreme and eternal good, He seeks to conform them
to the image of His Son. Romans 8:29
The one way our hearts and lives will continually be fashioned after
the Spirit of Jesus is to take time to maintain a ” whole hearted and
sincere and pure devotion to Christ”, II Corinthians 11:3, (Amplified Bible)
seeing His beauty, perfections, purity, and power as a person.
The deadly enemy of this glorious process, either keeping us
thinking we are good enough, or occupied with struggling with sins, is an
unrealized, unholy, level of worldliness.
If we are to be truly obedient, and “holy as He is holy”, and
“rejoicing in the Lord always”, there must be a positive and merciless
renunciation of rejoicing in the “things that are in the world”. Too
radical? Study the four gospels, learn Jesus’ values in truth, and then talk
about radical.
It’s either/or. As foreign as it is to most professing Christians
today, who have no idea how worldly they really are, Jesus meant it when He
said, to be like Him, and receive the full blessing of the Father, you must
” hate your life in this world”.
John 12:25. What can this possibly mean except what it says?
Now that would be something really new for the New Year, and would
bring us true blessing we didn’t know was possible.

“Out, out, brief candle!
Lile’s but a walking shadow,
a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon
the stage and then is
heard no more.”
Macheth V.5

Thinking on these lines by Shakespeare at around 4:00 AM on January
10, 1999 (my birthday)
I was moved to write the following.
Pastor John

Ah child of a fleeting
day, performing in
your one-act play,
And with no power
to delay the curtain
falling on this clay.
Yet loath to turn to
Him and pray, thus
blind to see His only
Way, and hear the
word that He would
say of love that
draws you to obey.