In the World, Not Of It

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

We as Christians must remind ourselves daily that we are in the world, but not of it. We can so easily be drawn in to the things of this world (money, clothes, food, homes, jobs) that we can forget that we need to pay more attention to the things not of this world (heaven, salvation, God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit). Our lives should be directed by the things not of this earth, not by the things of this earth.

How can we do that? By looking to Christ and mirroring what he did and said while on this earth. Remember what he said: “For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes” (Luke 12:23). Christ spent more of his time talking to people about the kingdom of heaven and the ways of God. His desire was to help people know more about what is unseen than what is seen. St. Paul tells us to do the same in 1 Corinthians 4:18: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

And there’s the heart of the matter. The world and everything in it will one day pass away. But God and our life in Christ will last forever. It is time, therefore, for us to release the grip we have on earthly things and hang on more tightly to the everlasting things. Putting the eternal before the temporal in our minds gives us the proper perspective in how we spend our time while we walk on this earth. Prayer, worship, reading God’s Word are what should take precedence in our lives and lead us forward to the world yet to come.