"True followers of Christ know that this world is not our home.
We are exiles here waiting until the day the Lord brings us home.
While He tarries, we must follow Jeremiah's directive.
We must live our lives, seek the best for our nations, and pray for and seek the welfare of others.
To do this, we must ensure that our hearts are with those around us.
The society we live in is polarized, and the hate culture is very strong.
Unfortunately, this is true in the church as well as the world.
The vitriol that Christians unleash against one another and, even worse, against unbelievers who are lost in our ignorant of the path to salvation is appalling.
As God shakes His head at our judgmental and petty bickering, the enemy laughs because his strategy for an ineffective and irrelevant church is playing out just as he had planned.
When John wrote, "Do not love the world or the teachings in the world" (1 John 2:15), he was speaking of the world's system, not the people in the world.
As Jesus told the Pharisees when He was dining in the home of the newly reformed notorious sinner, Matthew, the tax collector, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17).
Like Daniel, we are here to love and show the truth of God's salvation to all sinners, great and small.
This includes those who vote differently, who are hostile to the church, who self-identify in ways that don't mesh with scripture, and who live only for themselves.
I'm not saying we agree with their views or accept their sin.
I'm saying that we love them with everything we have, because that's how God loved us when we were lost in our sins."
Discovering Daniel: Finding Our Hope in God’s Prophetic Plan Amid Global Chaos
- Amir Tsarfati https://a.co/d/0aTOyXF9
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