Skip to main content

Make a Decision


          To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. (Proverbs 8:13)

          Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

          The greedy stir up conflict, but those who trust in the Lord will prosper. (Proverbs 28:25)

          One of the complaints I hear is about the sense of entitlement that young folks today have. Now, my first response to this is that every generation is attacked by the generations that came before it as being useless, foolish, indulged, and evil. And each new generation looks back at the generations that have gone before and sees uselessness, foolishness, indulgence, and evil.
          Scripture doesn’t blame one generation or another. We’re all selfish. We are all prideful. We are all greedy, and those three are all probably facets of the same sin. We would be like the Most High. We want to be God, determining our own reality. That’s pride. We want our vision of how things should be to prevail. We think “right” is (or at least should be) what we declare to be right, and that includes our getting all we think we deserve. We think that we should be granted the same level of privilege (or more) as that other person over there (whoever that might be.) That’s greed. Both are entitlement.
           Even those who claim they want God to be on the throne of their lives tend to be like Cathleen in this video: Cathleen. But it’s obvious that pride, greed, and entitlement all lead to “…make a decision…You just did.”
          The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the sword of the Spirit seem to be the weapons most useful in fighting these battles. It comes to mind that in selecting a few from the list, we might reach the conclusion that they aren’t all needed each time. That’s not true. We always need all of them, but accepting the truth that we are not God, accepting the fact that we are limited, and that we should not get all that we want seems key. Doing the good that we can with what’s available, and looking to the Word to find out what the good we can do includes as well as what the evil that we should not do includes also seem great places to start.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
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

The Shepherd!

                 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep . (John 10:14) God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Genesis 3:14) The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4) For the Jews, it was politically incorrect to make claims about yourself as a teacher (or possibly as anything else.) Teachers were expected to take pride in the...
Post a Comment
Read more