Skip to main content

Wants, Needs, and Lies


Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor. (Proverbs 21:21)
          A book I read recently (Creating Character Arcs, by K. M. Weiland) says that in order to create interesting characters, a writer should identify the lie that the character believes, the thing the character wants, and the thing that the character actually needs. The purpose of the story is to show the character reject the lie he/she believes and turn from the thing he/she wants in order to achieve or attain the thing he/she needs (often, that needed thing is the truth.) 
          That’s the situation described in today’s passage. The lie is that life, prosperity, and honor are what will make us happy. We buy into this lie so strongly that we think ourselves compassionate if we demand that everyone is provided with a certain quality of life, we shame those who shame anyone (unless we agree,) and we insist that our government provide a “safety net” for those who aren’t prosperous. Who cares about righteousness? Or, who cares about righteousness if it can’t be used to secure life, prosperity, and honor?
          But today’s Scripture tells us that those who pursue what is needed: righteousness, will find the things we want. Sometimes, God does work that way. There are other times when God shows us that by pursuing righteousness, we discover what real life, real prosperity, and real honor are. There are also times when God shows us that life, prosperity, and honor aren’t what we need. They aren’t even what we really want, and in pursuing righteousness, we can walk away from those other things like Lot, and not Lot’s wife.
          Lord, teach us to want what we need. Teach us to recognize the difference between a want and a need.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more