“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” — 1 John 2:15

I heard an interesting story recently.

Two men apparently broke into a department store one night for some mischief.

Only they didn’t STEAL anything while they were inside.

Instead, they switched the price tags on a lot of the items inside the store!

Something that was really only worth a couple of bucks, suddenly had a price tag that stated it cost a couple HUNDRED bucks.

Now, here’s where the interesting part comes in. The next morning, it was several hours into the workday before anyone noticed the switch.

During that time there had been MANY purchases made with the switched price tags, including several people who had bought two dollar items for hundreds of dollars! Really.

It seems that they purchased a bunch of different items, paid for everything on a credit card, and didn’t even notice the inflated prices.

You know, this serves to remind us of an important truth…

…the world is always trying to switch our values.

The world wants us to believe that the things that God says aren’t important, are extremely valuable. Satan and his crew want us to place high priority on things that God says shouldn’t have precedence in our lives. The evil one wants us to spend our time and resources gathering things that aren’t really as valuable as the tag that is attached says they are.

He wants us to pay too high a price for the things that don’t really matter.

Think about it for just a moment. Here are just a “few” of the world’s teachings…

“You gotta look out for number one. Do whatever it takes to get to the top, whether it’s in business or athletics or politics or anything else…do what’s best for you. After all, God helps those who help themselves.”

“It’s okay to mock God…if it’s entertainment. It’s okay to watch movies that curse the Name of Jesus and are filled with nudity & sexual situations…as long as you don’t participate yourself…you can watch others on the big screen.”

“There’s no better time than tomorrow. Sure, you should witness to your neighbor. Yes, you should serve the Lord. Absolutely, you should live for your Savior and give Him all your heart, soul, mind and strength…why don’t you start tomorrow?”

We could go on and on and on here — the point is, satan wants to switch our values around. He wants us to place high priority on things that don’t amount to a hill of beans. He wants us to treasure the things of this world and to make them our god and to spend all of our time and resources in serving them.

He started with Eve in the garden in telling her that what God said “Stay away from” was the most important thing she needed.

And he’s been doing it ever since.

Christian, we need to be very careful where we get our “values” from. We should never let the media and advertising and worldly counsel establish what we believe is important and valuable.

We should let God decide that.

After all, He’s God.

Jimmy D. Brown support@Living4Jesus.com