Conforming...

This morning, I read the second half of 1 Peter 1.  These four verses really stuck out to me today:

"13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."  

Christians have a living hope - Jesus.  Our hope is living because it is sure, certain, and real.  Because of our hope, our lives should be different -  different from how they were before we had this hope.  I mean, if one day you think you are going to be single for the rest of your life, but then you meet this great guy/gal and you start dating and you have this hope that you will get married - you act differently, you feel differently.  Our hope in our future with Jesus should be like a billion times even better than that and our lives should be changed because of that hope.

We must constantly set our hope on that future and keep it in mind without becoming overburdened by life.  We have to keep perspective of that.  We need to not be conformed to our old life - our former "ignorance" before meeting Christ.  It is like how before you learned your ABCs, you were ignorant as to how to spell and when someone asked you what a letter was you would just always say G.  But after you learned your alphabet, it would be completely ignorant of you to say every letter was G when you knew now that it wasn't.  We now know the truth, so it would be ignorant of us to live opposed to the truth. 

Our responsibility is to keep our inner life and thoughts focused on our hope and to live it out through our outward actions.  All areas of our lives should be continually in the process of conforming to God's perfect and holy will.  No, we will never attain holiness and perfection in this lifetime on earth - but we must cling to our hope and with that hope comes a desire to try to attain a conformity with Jesus as best we can during our lifetime.