John 17:14-18 NIV “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.17.14-18.NIV
God in Jesus prays for us and tells us how He has prepared us to live in this world and what living in this world should look like for His people. God has left us in this world to win the world to Himself. This is why we remain on this earth instead of immediately going to heaven. God so loved the world that He came into this world as the Son to save the world. We stay in the world to make known this Son to every generation and reconcile every generation to Him. The word of God is a gift from God, reminding us of His words and keeping us in alignment with His will. The word of God directs us even as it transforms us by the power of the Holy Spirit, Who activates its truth in our lives. Sanctification is the result of knowing Scripture and obeying it in the power of the Holy Spirit, Who conforms us into the image of Jesus, that we might be one with Him as He is One with the Father. This obedience can be summarized as working for the glory of God on earth by seeing His kingdom come and His will be done, even as Jesus worked when He lived among us as one of us, though He has always been God. Jesus came to make disciples, building fishers of men who, like Him, seek and save the lost, so that every generation walks in obedience to everything Jesus commands. The Christian life is a life of reading God’s word and obeying it with the expectation that we will be fully engaged in God’s work, continually manifesting God’s character. Doing this will cause some in the culture to hate us, even as some hated Jesus, but blessed are we who are maligned and despised for Christ’s sake, for great is our reward when we suffer for Him just as He suffered for us.
RUN TODAY’S PLAY: by going into the world, not to blend in, but to stand out
