For many years I was very comfortable with the ways of the world. I was trying to make my life as secure as possible. When I started following Jesus, that all began to change and I didn’t understand what was happening. The Lord started leading me to do things that didn’t make sense to others. After serving almost ten years in the Navy, I could have worked another ten years and retired. He was leading me in another direction, though, so I completed my enlistment and went to college. It wasn’t easy with a wife and three children, but God proved Himself faithful time and again. Now, I am grateful for the way He led me. I have never once regretted the decision I made. My comfort is in Him. My security is in Him. My confidence is in Him. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I know that wherever I go or whatever happens, the Lord will be the one, continuous reality in my life that will never change.
“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’”
Mark 8:34-37
“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.”
1 John 2:15-17