“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.”
Yet again, the bible nailed it! NAILED IT! So apt, i could close my eyes, whirl my finger and stab the screen and be 92% sure that i'd hit something i can relate to. Those are all the not-so-fun things that happen when we do our own thing and ignore God, when we live by our own plans.
Stuff goes wrong when i go my own way
Each one is amusingly and painfully true, I don't even know where to start. Ok, maybe line 9: "the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival." That moment when you irrationally believe none of your friends should drive a BMW like you or be as successful as you are (Beep. Rival alert) or that moment you meet a nice looking lady and you conclude that she's trying to steal your husband (BEEP!) LOL! Borderline cuckoo-cuckoo. This is what happens when we don't spend time with God and let our minds run amok and be ruled by our emotions instead of His spirit. Good news though, we hacked the "frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness" problem (line 4) in a previous post.
It all ends here; God gives us freedom, the way we use it is completely up to us. If He had his way though, you would love and be loved, not be trapped in a cycle of repetitive, loveless sex with some random person; you'd be delighted every second of your existence, rid of all mental garbage; you'd dream big and achieve greatness; you wouldn't be subjected to addictions, no porn-lovin', no drugs. If He had his way, we wouldn't hoard cheap trinkets, in other words, our idea of value wouldn't be so limited; values like the number of double taps on IG pictures or friends on FB. He'd rather load us with pearls, chrysolites, amethysts, sapphires and crazy-sounding gem stones we've never even heard of; He'd hook us up with higher standards of value. We wouldn't depend on the validation of people or the need to identify with a group, instead, He'd be our identity, He'd be our contentment and joy and he'd be our treasure.
Give him a chance, you've got nothing to lose.
Just for a second, go over the quote again. What part of it jumped out at you?
