are you living for God or the world?
Something that God has made me ask myself lately is this: Am I living for Him, or am I living for the world?
For so long, I allowed the world to dictate how I lived. And I thought that years after I became a Christian, I was finally on the right track. That I was putting to death my flesh, picking up my cross, and saying no to the world but God opened my eyes to something I didn’t even realize was the world: my job.
For years, I was fine with what I was doing. I could tolerate doing work that had nothing to do with God. I accepted the abuse from customers, coworkers, and everything else for a paycheck because I thought this was what I had to do. But slowly but surely, as I got closer to God, the disconnect started. I could see that not only was I not doing all that I could for God, I was enabling the works of the flesh. I had yoked myself to darkness. I had yoked myself to mammon.
The creative and spiritual gifts that God gave me were buried under the world’s love of shoes, shirts, and promo codes. Even when I myself had no love for these things, there I was promoting and pushing and furthering people’s love for them. I was letting my job conform me into its image. And when I realized that, I knew I had to make a change.
I wanted to make a true, eternal impact in people’s lives, an impact that led them to heaven. I wanted to put God first in every area of my life. I didn’t want money to control me anymore. So I prayed to God and asked Him to get me out, and He did. After lots of twists, turns, ups, and downs, here I am now committing myself to fully living for God and bringing Him the glory like He deserves with the gifts that He gave me. Planting seeds into the world, into people, that He can increase.
I am living Matthew 6:25-34 in real time. I am walking the narrow way, no matter how stormy it looks, because I understand that God is worth it, that people need to be saved.
So my questions for you are:
Are you living for God or the world? (Matthew 6:24)
Do you know the Word, or do you know tradition? (Matthew 15:8–9)
Are you fully using the gifts God gave you for His glory, or are they being buried, or used for your glory or the glory of the world? (1 Peter 4:10–11, Matthew 25:24–28)
Are you doing everything you can to lead people to Christ and build up the body of Christ with your gifts? (Romans 15:2)
Truly reflect on those questions, examine yourself for the answers. If you don’t like the answers, go to God, repent, and ask Him for the knowledge, wisdom, and strength to truly live for Him in this fallen world. In doing so, you can start to store up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21).
