Christ's life is the way to greater happiness. Helen Keller, blind all her life, was nonetheless typical of Jesus' followers when she said in her later years, "Life is beautiful." Napoleon, on the other hand, after conquering all of Europe, said, "I've never known five happy days in my life."
There's a quiet power in living a Christlike life. ...Napoleon observed that he, Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Charlemagne had all founded empires based on force. Jesus, however, founded His kingdom on love and humility. Today there are millions who have committed their lives to Jesus and would probably die for Him. How many would die for Napoleon or Caesar? So which is the greater power?
--Willard Tate
"How To Get What You Want and Want What You Get"
I know none of us can say with 100% certainty what we would do in a given hypothetical situation. However, I can say with complete assurance that I would never willingly give my life for a government, a nation, a system, an institution, or an organization. Nothing manmade is worth dying for.
And though I haven't been tested in this regard, I do think that I would be willing to die for Jesus. I can't imagine ever believing that keeping my physical life is worth denying Christ. I can't imagine ever wanting to give up eternity with God in order to keep my physical life.
My sinuses don't even work properly--why should I care what happens to this body I live in? ;o)
And yet, even with these high ideals, I still have trouble giving up my human desires. I still find it almost impossible to separate my real needs from my perferences, my mere wants. Last week, I said that I needed that new pair of jeans. After all, my other pairs don't really fit properly. But no, let me be honest: I didn't need the jeans, I just wanted them. I don't need the new bed, I just want it. I don't need to wear makeup or get another degree or go to movies regularly or be able to flit back and forth between Oklahoma and Germany....I just want to.
In Lucado's "Traveling Light," I read:
Are you in prison? You are if you feel better when you have more and worse when you have less. You are if joy is one delivery away, one transfer away, one award away, or one makeover away. If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then face it--you are in prison, the prison of want.
Yep. I'm in it. I keep getting paroled, God keeps bailing me out, but like a moron I keep running back in, like the criminal who can't handle living in the real world.
Oh, for the maturity to stay out of jail!!! :oP
Thursday, February 02, 2006
another thought to share
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2 comments:
The jail analogy is so fitting for our situation. I also refer to my sinfulness as being stuck in a dark, deep pit that I can't crawl out of. Only God is able to pull me out and place me back on a high rock. But somehow, I seem to stumble back into the stinking pit! You'd think I'd have learned how to walk and avoid those pits about now! But thankfully God can rescue us out of those pits of despair!
And from the machines that evil Counts use to torture us in those pits!
By the way....how many fingers do you have? ;o)
Seriously, though....jail, pits, stumbling around in darkness....What I have to remind myself of is that sometimes, I *choose* those bad places without even paying attention to what I'm doing. I'm so thankful that God still wants me, in spite of my foolish choices.
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