How much of our lives are spent living for this world?

Do you have your own righteousness? Seriously. Do you have your own righteousness? What do I mean by righteousness? I mean this-

Webster's 1828 Dictionary has this to say-

'Righteousness

RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. ri'chusness.

1. Purity of heart and rectitude of life; conformity of heart and life to the divine law. Righteousness, as used in Scripture and theology, in which it is chiefly used, is nearly equivalent to holiness, comprehending holy principles and affections of heart, and conformity of life to the divine law. It includes all we call justice, honesty and virtue, with holy affections; in short, it is true religion.

2. Applied to God, the perfection or holiness of his nature; exact rectitude; faithfulness.

3. The active and passive obedience of Christ, by which the law of God is fulfilled. Dan 9.

4. Justice; equity between man and man. Luke 1.

5. The cause of our justification.'

Do you have your OWN holiness? Your own perfection? 

There is something that mankind calls good, and another thing mankind calls bad,  they call things right and they call things wrong.  They believe if they hurt no one and live by a personal code of conduct that they are righteous, but the truth of the matter is, ANY good, ANY right things we do matter not at all if they are done out of anything but LOVE. If we do good so we can be called good, if we do right so we can be called right, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things because all that goodness, all that right doing is being done out of a selfish heart, a proud heart, a heart that wants to be able to say to itself and perhaps others that it is a good heart- and therefore the person having that good heart is a good person.  The glory for which that heart seeks can be ignored because they are a good person and if it takes a selfish heart to be a good person to others, what harm is there in that? All the harm in ...well, eternity.  I could have said all the harm in the world, but it's not this world we want to live for, is it?

How much of our lives are spent living for this world?  All of it some would say, not believing a person could live for any other sort of world.  We take great stock in being able to say this is our home and we need to take pride it in.  If Aliens from outer space were to invade us we'd quickly rise up and defend our earthly home. If people from other countries degrade our country, then pride for our home country rises up. We can whittle that down to people from our hometowns having hometown pride, because people value their roots, right?   Yet the deepest roots of people going back hundreds maybe thousands of years in a single home town, mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

Satan wants us to take pride in anything and everything of this world, of this life, but let me ask you- what did Jesus take pride in of this world?  Jesus, prideful? Never.  However, Jesus did speak longingly and at great lengths about things, what sort of things? HEAVENLY THINGS.  His entire message was a HEAVENLY message. The gospel He brought to us was a HEAVENLY gospel, the gospel of the Kingdom of God, the gospel of the grace of our Savior whose sole purpose in taking on flesh and divesting Himself of His completely spiritual essence was to give all of us a chance to experience the kingdom of heaven. 

Heaven is NOT guaranteed to anyone! Too many believe they have an automated free pass to heaven upon death, but this isn't true! If it were true, why did Jesus, why did our God, Jesus, take on flesh and die for us?

Rom 10:3  For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

We can't be ignorant of God's righteousness!  We have to constantly believe in GOD'S righteousness!  And God's righteousness tells us our pride should be in HEAVEN where GOD DWELLS, where our SAVIOR DWELLS.  By the Holy Spirit may we live in HIM now and forever-   more tomorrow by the grace of JESUS our LORD.

Amen!