“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
2 Timothy 2:22 NIV
One of the most influential industries in our society is the advertising industry. Their job is simply to sell products and services to people. How do they succeed in accomplishing this task? They peddle things that appeal to our human desires. If you want to sell food, parade pictures of mouth watering dishes before their audience to entice them to buy their food. If you want to sell beer or other products that have to do with sport crowds, show them cool enticements like fast cars or beautiful women. The idea is to capture the audience’s attention. When you have their attention, you can gain their emotions. People act on their emotions so they will go buy what they are feeling and indulge.
This process is used to generate emotional responses to things others would like us to support. We must be very careful what we pay attention to for the majority of it these days is designed to pull us away from our Christian walk. R rated movies and tv shows are prominent but do we decline such shows because of their content? We often remain in groups who support actions and behaviors that cut against our faith. Friends, we must separate ourselves from the “evil desires” talked about in our verse today. We cannot fill our hearts and minds with such sin and still believe we are seeking God’s righteousness.
We are called to pursue righteousness not just wait for it to fall into our lap. We need to make better choices on what we fix our attention on and what we support in our daily lives. Fill your heart today with things of the kingdom and be blessed!
In Christ
RJ