What World Are You In?

by Terry Wane Benton

People live in different worlds! Some live in a world of poverty, dysfunction, hate, violence, fear, and hopelessness, while others live in the same poverty but choose love and peace, which gives them hope. The two may live in the same housing projects, but they live in different worlds of experience. Consider also that two rich families may live in similar houses and own similar things. One is miserable, and the other is happy. They live in different worlds on the inside. One is taught to be thankful, caring, and generous to others. The other learned selfishness. They live next door but come from different worlds.

We each create our own world with certain building blocks of the heart. Being thankful and glorifying God is building block #1. A good world builds up from there. Paul mentions this in Romans 1:19ff. He explains what went wrong and why things got worse. He spoke of where the lives began to go wrong. It started by deciding to build life without building block #1. You can be rich or poor, black, brown, or white, but you can make your world so much better, at least on the inside, with building block #1. The structure of your life and your happiness are not dependent on the amount of material things (Philippians 3:12; 4:8-13).

What is your first building block? What are you building? Or are you self-destructing? What could your world be like with proper building blocks?