“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13.

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4

It is in Submission

I don’t always do what God asks of me. 
Sometimes I turn to my own way.
I wander from the path He has anointed;
Just like sheep, I go astray.
Sometimes I don’t obey His instructions.
Sometimes I fail to do what’s right.
Sometimes I heed the world’s calling;
Until it’s the only thing in sight.

But when I lift my arms to praise Him 
My sins cease to burden me.
It is in the praise I feel the magic,
It is in the praise He sets me free.

I often promise to wait for direction, 
Wait until I hear God’s voice.
Then, I turn my ear to the world 
Rejecting God with my choice.
I often make plans to walk with God
And allow Him to order all my steps.
Then I start stepping to the world
And soon, I’m caught up in its web.

But when I get on my knees to pray,
He wraps me in His loving arms.
It is on my knees that I feel His safety,
It is on my knees that I fear no harm.

I tell myself I’m a loyal friend to God.
That I have allegiance to only Him.
Until the enemy calls from the world
To tell me we can all be friends.
But I can’t have God and the world.
I know I have to make a choice.
I can kneel to God in submission 
Or be led to hell by the devil’s voice.

So, I choose to humbly kneel to God, 
Submitting to His sovereignty,   
 It is in submission that I honor Him,
It is in submission that I am free.
Linda Troxell © March 13, 2022

Friendship with the World

The word friend is a commonly used word in the English language. But what is a friend? It’s a term that can mean different things to different people in different situations. Like so many English words, it can have deep meaning on the one hand, and on the other, it can be tossed around casually with little meaning and less intent.

We all want friends. Some of us long for a friendship in which we can trust someone with our heart and soul. Others are content to have light friendships with conversations never deeper than the latest sports scores. The former is a rare and precious gift, the latter can be found on any barstool. But very few humans are content to have no kind of friendship at all.

The Bible speaks of friendship in many different ways. It extols its loyalty;  A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother  Proverbs 18:24. And it acclaims its sacrifice; Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13. And it warns us of its power to shape us for good or for ill;  Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20

Of all the many ways in which the Bible talks about friendship, there is one that I have never fully understood. The Bible says to be a good Christian we cannot be friends with the world. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4

What does that mean? Are we being told that we need to withdraw from the world into a cloistered community that doesn’t allow the world in? Are we to be like the ancient monks who never left the monastery? Or like the Amish who live in a closed community without modern conveniences? Or am I overcomplicating it?

We who grew up in the U.S. were taught that to be a good friend is a good thing. At least that’s what those of us who went to public school or watched T.V. as children were taught. So, why then, does the Bible tell us we should not be a friend to the world? Maybe this is another instance of an English word with so many definitions it’s difficult to establish its meaning. 

But there is another way that the idea of James 4:4 is often conveyed in Christian circles. It’s this, “We are to be in the world but not of the world.” Now, I’ve always understood this to mean that while we, Christians, must live here on earth, we are not to participate in the culture of the world. Is that the meaning and is it actually a Christian mandate?  

To understand the question we have to look at the meaning of the words in and of. What is the difference between being in and being of? This section could lend itself to a lengthy discussion of grammar and parts of speech. However, because neither topic is my forte, we will instead, be depending on the expertise of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 

According to Merriam-Webster, the word “in” can take on many different parts of speech and its meaning depends on the part of speech it has in any given sentence. In our sentence, the word in serves as a  preposition and is used as a function word to indicate inclusion, location, or position. Living in the world indicates that our lives take place on earth or, in the world.   

As might be expected, the word “of” has several meanings as well. But for our purpose, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us, it is used as a function word to indicate a belonging or a possessive relationship between people or things. For example, the word of God tells us that the words under consideration belong to God.  

Putting the two definitions together, to be in the world but not of the world” means that although we live in the world, do worldly things to provide for ourselves and our families, we do not belong to the world. We are resident aliens, visitors, just waiting to go back home to heaven. 

Living in the world but not being of the world, we don’t live as the world lives. We don’t live by worldly standards, we live by Biblical standards. We don’t allow our relationship with the world to compete with our relationship with God. Because we are not of the world, we do not aspire to the things the world finds important but we aspire to the will of God. 

In the end, it seems to be this simple: As Christians, we are to live in the world and patiently wait for Jesus to come back and take us to our real home. While we wait, we are not to be part of the world. We are to live by Christian standards, beliefs, and values as defined by the Bible, particularly those of the gospel. And we are to keep our association and interaction with nonbelievers to a minimum.

This might be a good time to mention that the phrase “be in the world but not of the world” is not found in the Bible. And while the meaning above might sound reasonable to some Christians, it isn’t Biblical. That leaves the meaning wide open to interpretation. 

While the interpretation I came up with above might be comfortable to some, again, it is not at all Biblical. Not as I understand the Bible. I’m not a scholar, but I know that Jesus told us some things that indicate that we cannot cloister ourselves as the old monks did, reading the Bible, meditating, praying, and waiting for the return of Jesus.  

The most obvious thing He said that indicates we are not to cloister is “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:19) We can’t go and make disciples if we don’t leave the abbey. If we want to make disciples we must interact with those who will be the disciples. Most often they will be sinful nonbelievers. 

I do believe the Bible is helpful in determining what a Christian life should look like. Because Jesus is a perfect model for how to live a Christian life. In John 15, Jesus makes an analogy about love and keeping commandments in which He likens the Father’s love for Him to His love for the disciples, and by extension for us.

In John 15:9 Jesus says, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now abide in My love.” In this statement, Jesus proclaims His love for us to be comparable to the Father’s love for Him. So how has the Father loved Jesus? We cannot answer that question except to say it is unfathomable. For, it is love more profound than we are capable of understanding in this lifetime.

If He had wanted us to understand the depth of His love, Jesus could have made a comparison we were more capable of understanding. He could have said He loves us as a husband loves his wife, as a mother loves her baby, or even as a miser loves his money. Those are earthly comparisons we can understand. Yet, He chose to tell us of His love in a way we cannot understand.

Then He tells us to abide in that love. What does that mean? The dictionary defines abide as “to accept, or act in accordance with a rule decision, etc.” However, it includes an archaic meaning, “to live or dwell.”  as well. And according to Strong’s Concordance, the Bible uses abide to mean dwell 15 times.

Where one abides is where one lives or where one stays. Here we are being told to live or stay in this love we cannot understand. I’ve been told that when Jesus says, “abide in my love” what He means is for us to stay in the knowledge of His love, or keep the knowledge that He loves us. But how can we stay in the knowledge of a love we are unable to understand?

It just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think that’s what He’s saying in this verse. When I consider it together with verse 10, I’m convinced it means something different. I think He is not telling us to live in His love but to live His love. I think Jesus is telling us to live our lives with the kind of love that He lived His. 

In verse 9 Jesus tells us that He loves us the way the Father loved Him and that we should live our lives with the same kind of love. Now, in verse 10, Jesus says, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Here, He is telling us that in order to live the Father’s love He had to keep the Father’s commandments. And by extension, telling us what we must do to live His love. We must keep His commandments.

The task Jesus came to earth to accomplish was a task that required great love, unfathomable love, love beyond mortal understanding. And it required that kind of love not only for the Father but for the people too. It was only by possessing the Father’s love as His own that Jesus could accomplish the goal. And to possess that kind of love, He had to keep the Father’s commandments. 

To live a sinless life in this sinful world knowing He would be hated so virulently and beaten and abused so cruelly, and still go to the cross willingly, Jesus would have to have unfathomable love for His father and for the people He would save from death. The only love so immense is the love of God, the Father. Jesus took the Father’s love into the world and lived it all the way to the cross. 

In turn, Jesus’ goal for us is to have that kind of love for all mankind. His commandments are the playbook by which we will reach the goal. Jesus was able to assume the Father’s love throughout His life on earth by keeping the Father’s commandments and we will assume Jesus’ love by keeping His commandments. That can’t be done from a cloistered existence. 

I picture the commandments, or the behavior of keeping the commandments, actually,  as keeping our gas tanks (our hearts) full of fuel (love). When we find it difficult to love those around us, we must go back to the playbook. We need to redouble our efforts to keep His commandments. 

You may be thinking there’s a fatal flaw in this scenario. How are we, sinful and imperfect humans, going to keep His commandments well enough to fill our tanks with love? There is a playbook for that as well. It’s prayer. No matter how unsuccessful we’ve been in doing what Jesus has asked of us when we get on our knees and pray, all is forgiven and He refills our hearts with love. 

Another means of filling our tanks is praise. When we are praising the Lord, His Love is abundant. When we start our day with praise we feel more capable of going forth in love. I’m not talking about just singing pretty songs. I’m talking about on our knees verbally praising our God for who He is. 

Singing is not a substitute for anything. Singing is singing. Singing or listening to Christian music is a way in which I motivate myself and energize myself sometimes. But it is not better or worse than listening to secular music to get my spirits up. Just because the lyrics are about God, doesn’t mean it is a religious activity. 

Singing or listening to Christian music is the smallest part of praise, in my opinion. It’s only a really good way to bring God into our consciousness. A way to prime our praise pump. But real praise is getting down on our knees and thanking God with sincere gratitude for His work in our lives. And it is doing it too when what is happening in our lives doesn’t look or feel praiseworthy. 

Real praise is trusting that God is blessing us even when we can’t see the blessing. And that kind of praise fills our hearts with love and allows us to extend the love to those around us. It allows us to live out the love of Jesus. 

So next time you think that you can’t be a friend to the world or that you should be in the world but not of the world, think about what it means. Being in the world doesn’t simply mean we live on earth, it means we are all in to love the people. We are all in to share Jesus. We are all in to follow His commandments in order to live out His love on earth.

Being of the world may mean having a possessive relationship with it. But it’s possessive as a parent is possessive of their child, feeling responsible for the child’s well-being. Being possessive of the world means keeping the world and all of its inhabitants safe and healthy because they all belong to our Father in Heaven. And although this is not our forever home, we are its stewards while we are here.  

Let’s Pray:

Father, sometimes we are confused by your Word. It was written long ago, it was written for a different culture and some of the translations can be confusing. But, then, Lord, if we are being really honest, there are the parts of your word we don’t really try to understand because it might restrict what we want to do and say. I think that the idea that we should be in the world but not of the world is one of those things. We’ve seen it used, Lord, as an excuse to not step up to do the hard work of helping people, the hard work of changing minds, and the hard work of sharing the gospel even when it’s uncomfortable. And Lord, I wonder how many know it isn’t even Biblical? When Jesus says He and His disciples are not of the world, He means something wholly different than how it’s being used today, Lord. Of course, It’s difficult to resist the ways of the world that bring us closer to the world and farther away from you. Please help us to navigate this difficult road, Lord. This is definitely a situation where the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. So we ask you, today Lord, please help us to be patient with our sanctification, help us to live in your love, and share it with everyone we meet in the world. Please work in our hearts, Lord, helping us to draw closer to you and closer to the church and retreat away from the enemy and the wickedness of the world. Although sometimes we don’t understand it, Lord, we do want your will, not ours, to prevail. We pray this in the holy name of Jesus, Amen!

Points for Pondering or for Prayer

OR

For Putting Pen to Paper. 

*Do you struggle with being in the world but not being caught up in the sin of the world?  

*Write down a few worldly things you have a hard time giving up or are most difficult to resist. Then write a paragraph about the most difficult one.

*Are there Biblical passages you have difficulty understanding and you suspect that it might be because they would cramp your style so to speak?

*Are there things you think God is asking you to do that you just don’t want to know about? Don’t be shy, It’s okay we all have some. 

*Sit down and think about this and make a list of things that come to mind. Then leave the list where you can add to it when something else comes to mind. Perhaps put it on your phone.

*Add to it over time, but be sure to erase those things that you conquer as you go. We want to be honest about our shortcomings but just as honest about our accomplishments.

*When you have 3- 5 things between the two lists, go to your favorite place to pray, or the place you pray about the really serious stuff and ask God to work in your heart to make you want these things more and to make them a little bit easier for you accomplish. 

May God Bless you with a willing heart!