Are You Ready For The Last Days?

In the last days there will be very difficult times.  For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred.  They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good.  They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.  They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NLT2)

Do you get the sense that we are in the last days?  Nearly 2000 years ago Paul was writing a young pastor named Timothy describing what the end times would look like.   It seems as if Paul thought Timothy might be alive to see the culture he described become reality.  I can't say for sure whether or not Timothy could see those things in the culture of Rome.   Either way, I can definitely see them in our culture today.  With the advent of the internet, cultural uniqueness among the nations of the world is quickly fading into what Paul so clearly defined as the culture of the "last days".

Let me encourage you not to be taken in by the wave of the masses.  Hold onto the things you have learned from Christ.  Love others as you love yourself and do not chase after money or what it can buy.  Honor your parents and be thankful to God for all that He has blessed you with.  Forgive those who offend you and truly love your family in Christ.  Strive to be the extension of Christ's love to His flock that He wants you to be.  Consider your life to be sacred, set apart for God's purposes.  Use your body, including your tongue to honor God always.  Focus on God's kingdom and brace yourself against the alure of the world.  Since the Garden of Eden it has been a tool in Satan's arsenal to get us to miss God. 

Your life will be flooded with people who will think you are odd for not embracing the things that they are pursuing.  Try to love them as God leads while remembering that it is possible to get too close.  If you are looking more like them and less like Christ, then heed the warning of Paul to Timothy:  "Stay away from people like that!"