1 John 2:17 - The world and its desires will pass away.

1 John 2:17 - The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. Ever look back at an old yearbook or old pictures and remember all the stupid stuff that we thought was SO important? We HAD to have the right clothes, or the right car, or get into the right schools. It was always something that was the most important thing at the time that we had to do. But now that we are older and wiser, we can stand back and realize those things were trivial. We can laugh at how we acted at the time. Our passage today is a great reminder for us. 1 John 2:17 - The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. Just like our younger days, the world, time, and our desires will pass away at some point. With good reason, the old saying goes, “you can’t take it with you when you are gone”. The last part of our verse though is what gives us hope. Here it says that the man who does the will of God lives forever. Understand, this is not saying that if you do real good, help others and give to charity that you will go to heaven. We can’t by our way into heaven. It is saying, we submit ourselves to Him, accept Him into our lives, and believe that He died for us so that we may live. If we live our lives in a way that reflects God and do His will while we are here, we will not die. We will dwell in the kingdom of Heaven forever with our creator. We are here but for a short time in the eyes of God. When we are called home, those things that mattered so much to us at the time will look small and silly. We will laugh at how we were. It is said that perception is in the eye of the beholder and that perception is reality. If that is true, I say we make our perception of our time here through the eyes of God.