2 Timothy 3....What a word for today!

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty." 2 Timothy 3:1

Paul wrote this to Timothy so he could be prepared.
Here we are in the 21st century and how true this word is for Christians today.
There is difficult times going on right now for thousands of believers everyday. Around the world there are believers being beaten, in prisoned, and killed for what they believe. I would call that difficult! We here in America are only for the most part experiencing verbal difficulties at most, yet while we call that suffering people are being persecuted around the world.

"For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power." 2 Timothy 3:2-5

Now this describes the United States doesn't it? It also probably describes other parts of the world. Yet for the sake of where I live I will use the United States as an example.
Lovers of self! How many times do we hear the statement? Just believe in yourself, love yourself. And then we are told not to be hard on yourself.
Self is our new god! As it was in the beginning. It is all about me and me alone. But not so in the kingdom of God. We are to crucify ourself! We are to deny ourself and not be a lover of self.
The world is full of selfishness. The kingdom of God is full of selflessness!

Lovers of money! Need I say more? What caused the financial collapse in the U.S.? For the most part love of money.
I am probably one of the last generations to grow up learning to be respectful to your elders, to be courteous and thankful. Yet today when you go out people are for the most part rude, ungrateful and slanderous. You hold the door open for someone and they give you the look of cursing! Or they walk on through without acknowledging you at all. It is like we owe them.
Now it is not for us as believers to return that kind of behaviour to them.
In the news today there is the subject of the street gang who killed the young man who was trying to help another person from being attacked. Brutality, recklessness and treacherous.
They took pleasure in what they did.
Where do you get your pleasure?
We are to be all for the Lord or nothing at all.

In todays society even in the church people are denying the power of God. They don't believe in miracles, they don't believe the gifts are for today etc.
So in turn we turn to.....money and self in order to accomplish what God has called us to do. Becuase again we deny His power.

So what does the word say we are to do with people like this?

"Avoid such people." 2 Timothy 3:5

We are to avoid those described above, because they are not of God.
That doesn't mean we are not to pray for them and continue to love them. Just don't get involved with what they are doing, because we can fall back into those trappings if we are not careful.

We are living in this day and age! We need to be ready in season and out! We must be willing to do what God has called us to do and be ready for the difficult time that is already promised.