friend or Foe

DEVOTION

PHILIPPIANS

FRIEND OR FOE

Phil 3:17-21

17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
NIV

There is a pattern, there have been examples set before me as to how I should approach life. What priorities have I set for my life and how I go about pursuing them is of concern to my Lord. Paul lays out a rather simply fact here, in which I cannot deny, one is either a friend of God and a foe to the world or a friend to the world and a foe to God. I cannot have it both ways, no I must choose. In a sense I cannot be married to God and have an affair with the world. Living according to the pattern God has set for me within the scripture requires turning my back on the ways of the world, the desires for the things of the world, my lust for the pleasures of this life. My ambitions and goals cannot be established based on the principles of this life. Having enough education, having the right profession, having enough money and the right portfolio for retirement are all matters of goals in this world. Rather should not I follow the pattern established by God, should not my ambition and goal be to spent eternity with my Lord and while still here on this Earth doing His will, not mine? How do I justify anything else but this? I am a friend of God, not a foe.