Desires of the Mind || 1 John 2:15-16 || Weekend Wind-Down #28

Welcome to Week 28 of our “Weekend Wind-Down” series. This series is where we take a piece of scripture, get its background information, and dig deeper into it to see what the Bible says about it and what we need to walk away with.

Today, our scripture is 1 John 2:15-16, which says: 

15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 

16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father. 

John wrote this letter to reassure Christians of the faith and to counter false teachings. John is in the middle of talking about how God is light. John shares crucial aspects of faith so that his audience would know the Christian truth from false teaching. 

John is teaching us not to love the things of the world or the things it offers us. It’s not about who we associate with. It’s not about the places we go. It’s not about the activities we enjoy. All those things can affect how we view ourselves and the world. It comes from our heart posture and three mindsets: 

• Our craving for physical pleasure – how much we focus on gratifying our physical desires. 
• Our craving for what we see – how much we want regarding things. 
• Our pride in our achievements and possessions – our obsession with status or importance. 

God doesn’t value these things like we do. God values things like self-control, generosity, and serving. Now, we can externally value these things and say that we’ll avoid the things of the world AND still have worldly desires in our hearts. So, how can we change? How can we keep godly values in our hearts while battling the things of the world? 

Romans 12:2 says how: 

2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of the world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. 

I went deeper into this passage a few weeks ago, so you must read that blog for the full explanation. The idea is that we change when we let God transform our thoughts. If we change our thoughts, we’ll know God’s plan for us, which is positive. I mentioned earlier that our hearts are often affected by craving for physical pleasure, things, and pride in our achievements. How often are we always thinking these things, too? How often do we think: “I’m lonely. I wonder if I should watch porn or call up someone to Netflix and chill?” What about when our friends show off their new car or latest vacation destination, and we think, “I wish I had that. I’m jealous.” How about when we celebrate our new car or a new job? We often want to share that with the world for all to see, regardless of how they feel. We often put ourselves in that situation more often than not. “What’s wrong with being proud,” you may ask. It matters why we’re proud. Are we proud because God is good or because we enjoy having the thing or title? God wants to transform these thoughts. 

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Just change our thoughts, and we’re good. Not necessarily. As mentioned, it’s easy to do this but still have proud, jealous, stubborn, selfish, and arrogant motives. We need the Holy Spirit to work in us to renew, reeducate, and redirect how our minds work. When this happens, we become transformed. For me, this has been a period of “unlearning and relearning.” It’s been a period of recognizing that things I once knew were incorrect or come from an unhealthy perspective. It’s acknowledging what I knew was wrong, which is difficult. It can bring about feelings of grief and losing control, but God’s there to walk alongside me. Then, it’s been a period of relearning and adjusting. It’s been figuring out the suitable sources to learn from and the crucial material to walk away with. God’s power of discernment has been working hard in me to understand these new things. It’s been challenging. There’s been many emotions that have come in this process. There have been many times when I wanted to quit due to not seeing any results or when I was highly uncomfortable. Yet, God’s given me the courage to continue, and I believe that God will do new work in me. I know one way will be through prayer, but my prayer life is rough. Thankfully, this isn’t a new situation. James 4:3-4 has this to say to others struggling in prayer life:

3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong – you want only what will give you pleasure. 

4 You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

James names three common problems when we go to prayer: we don’t ask at all, we ask for the wrong things, and we ask for the wrong reasons. I’ve been the cause of all three of these problems both simultaneously and at different times. Typically, I’m not an asking person. I don’t ask for help often because I feel like it’s weak or because others might judge me. I also won’t ask because I don’t want to be a burden. It’s the same way with God. I won’t ask because I don’t want to burden God with my needs. I don’t want God to judge me with a struggle that feels easy to overcome. I will just coast by until it gets to a point when I’m extremely overwhelmed and then trauma dump to God. Being friends with worldly standards often takes the form of finding pleasure at the expense of others or God. When you ask God for something, who are you doing it for? Is it for you or God? If I ask God for something to me, it often leads to anxiousness, greed, pride, and a high chance of leaving God on the sidelines. If it’s for God, though, it can lead to a stronger faith, more hope and love, better produce in the fruit of the spirit, and eternal life.

I know it’s vague to discuss, so let me share a battle I’m wrestling with. I know it’s getting time to move out of my parent’s house and start my life on my own. My parents have been great to me all my life, and I am super grateful that they’ve kept me here all these years, but I know it’s getting time. Why? It’s my age, which is about me. It’s the feeling that God could do more for me and I could serve God better, which is about God. There’s been a tug-of-war in my mind, wrestling between these two perspectives. Which one is winning right now? It’s the me-centered mindset. Could that change tomorrow? Yep. Our minds must stay focused on God, which we will continually work on all our lives.

Paul gives us an example of how our lives should look in Romans 13:13-14:

13 Because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see. Don’t participate in the darkness of wild parties and drunkenness, or in sexual promiscuity and immoral living, or in quarreling or jealousy. 

14 Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And don’t let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires. 

Always remember that when there are references to “the day” or “the day of the Lord,” it refers to Jesus’ second coming and when God will judge all of us. Paul says we need to live decent lives because we belong to God. Not good, great, or perfect lives, but we must live decent lives. Decent is the Greek word euschémonós (yoo-skhay-mon’-ose), which means to live in a respectable and honorable way. It comes from the Greek word euschémón (yoo-skhay’-mone), described as the outward manifestation of godliness. It means we need to encourage others, which can positively attract attention. Then Paul shares six things we shouldn’t participate in: 

• Go to riotous parties that hosted unbridled sexual immorality
• Deep drinking
• Sleeping around; adultery/cheating on your significant other.
• Doing things that are shocking to public decency
• Being ready to fight
• Let our feelings boil over.

“Now Marc, that’s not what verse 13 says!” You’re right, but I share it this way to get a clear understanding of what Paul is saying. All those things come from the Greek words Paul wrote. I’ve seen this verse get used to shame Christians from celebrating, getting into relationships, occasionally having a beer or glass of wine, and more. Paul wants us not to go to the extremes of these areas, which is happening more in his culture. Paul wants us instead to clothe ourselves, or envelop ourselves, in the presence of Jesus. We should share the qualities that Jesus shared when he was with us—things like love, humbleness, truth, and servanthood. These aren’t typical go-to reactions for some of us. Yet, that’s why we are to continue to learn how to be more like Jesus daily. Otherwise, we fall back into sinful nature, which Paul talks about in Ephesians 2:3:

3 All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. 

All of us were and are sinners. We all have sinful acts, desires, and moves. Through Jesus, we’re saved from and receive forgiveness for those sins because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. None of us is perfect, regardless of our thoughts or words. There are moments when we don’t love God with our whole hearts or consistently love our neighbors as ourselves or as Jesus loved us. We’ll do it because we want to do something nice, or we’ll do it because we feel obligated to. We don’t do it because we’re encouraged and excited by God. We don’t do it because of its benefits to the Kingdom of God. Others will do good things for others because we are all created in God’s image, whether we know it or not. Know that there’s good happening in this world. It’s hard to lose sight of that because of all the bad highlighted on the news and social media. Walking in public with a smile and God’s light shining when it feels dark is hard. God offers us the chance to unite with Jesus’ perfect life to be considered good. God does not force us to do this. We have the chance to join God in this. We can walk in willingly, submit our lives to God, and allow him to change our thoughts, actions, feelings, and words in ways we can not understand. 

Thanks for joining me for this Weekend Wind-Down! We learned how not to love the things of the world but instead to love the things that God loves based on Paul’s various letters and the teachings of John and James. Let me close this in prayer: 

Father God, thank you for the teachings shown to us in Scripture about how to turn away from worldly desires and to godly desires. We know this is a daily battle, so please help discern these differences and apply the godly ways to our lives. We love you, Lord, and we pray this in your name. Amen.