Prov 14:12 (NIV) There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Jesus spent a lot of time on these spiritual issues with His disciples. He had to constantly challenge their way of thinking. In our Spirit-to-spirit relationship with the Holy Spirit, we are going to need to be constantly corrected by Him. He will be trying to get us to let Him undo and retrain us in how to live life the Kingdom of God way.

Most of us will find this to be very confusing and often frustrating. A lot of us will have areas of our training where we will literally be starting all over again. We have a lot of confidence in our world training. It does seem to most of us to be the right way to do things. The question the world is always asking is: “How can it be wrong when it feels so right?”

1 John 2:15-17 (NIV) Do not love the world or ANYTHING IN THE WORLD. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

When we read something like this, we think in big terms. We think God is talking about being in love with something so evil it is beyond us. But, this Scripture defines what is being referred to here. Our cravings, lusts from things we see, and bragging are the issues being pointed out. It is the same low level issues as with loving “anything in the world.” In other words, it can be things we would consider normal ways of life. It is talking about the “everybody does it this way” patterns of running our lives.

One of your biggest challenges, as a minister, will be to help people see God’s way as being better than the way “everyone else” is doing it. Even as a minister and a mature Christian, you will be amazed at how many worldly concepts are STILL influencing the way you think. How is God going to help us get these concepts out of our hearts?