As Aliens and Strangers

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

1 Peter 2:11

If you’re living for fleshly lusts you are wasting your life.

Why? Because everything you know right now apart from Jesus is temporary.  Pleasure is temporary.  Wealth is temporary.  Family relationships are temporary.  Achievements are temporary.  Status and fame are temporary.  Everything you can see, smell, touch, taste, hear, and feel, every thought and idea, everything but Jesus is temporary.

It’s not just that you can’t take it with you either.  Read 2 Peter 3:10.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

Still not convinced?  Try Revelation 21:1.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

In the end everything we now know will be destroyed.  Gone.  As if it never existed. 

Would you spend years of your life toiling for something you knew you would only be able to enjoy for a minute or two before seeing it burned up, destroyed, never to be seen again?  Probably not.

When you pursue fleshly lusts that’s exactly what you’re doing.  In the span of eternity your life is basically nothing.

So what are you living for?  Temporary lusts or eternal glory?