There is a tendency among many Christians today to allow the world to keep a stronghold on them. Even if worldly ways are spreading through believers around us, this is no excuse for any one of us to follow in like suit. When we receive Jesus as our Savior, we are renouncing the system of the world that rejected and killed Him. This is the reason John admonished us to stay free from the ways of the world.

I John 2:15-17—Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the Love of 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 passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
NIrV—Do not love the world or anything in it. If you love the world, Love for the Father is not in you. Here is what people who belong to this world do. They try to satisfy what their sinful natures want to do. They long for what their sinful eyes look at. They brag about what they have and what they do. All of this comes from the world. It doesn’t come from the Father. The world and its evil longings are passing away. But those who do what God wants them to do live forever.

John 17:15—I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil (the evil one).

FATHER, please help me be rightly related to the world. I don’t want to be isolated from the very ones for whom Your Son died. But, I want to walk among them as a true witness for Him. Please set me free from the things of the world that are trying to draw me away from You. Set me free from all the forces at work in the world that oppose Your Kingdom.

Taking Note How God Loved the Lord—John 3:16

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