“Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you
think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so
that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s
sight.” – 1 Corinthians 3:18-19
I have talked to many people who had been confronted with the
conflict of obedience to God and their personal, earthly ambitions. The “American Dream”, which is not talked
about much anymore, is owning a house and having a new car in the drive.
“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone
loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of
life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away,
and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” – 1
John 2:15-17
We need to focus on the eternal. But, for many of us, the things
of this world dominate us and will demand that we reject God in favor of them. There
is a storage industry built around our avarice for accumulating. We fill up our houses, our attics, our garages
(that is why our new car is in the driveway) and so we rent a space to store
more things. Oh, I am guilty too. There is something peculiar about our drive
to have possessions.
“And he [Jesus] told
them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant
harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my
crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and
build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to
myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat,
drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life
will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for
yourself?’” – Luke 12:16-20
God says “Do not put confidence or seek consolation through accumulation,
but in Me.” I have known a number of people that are devoted to their
possessions. We see the extreme in
people called hoarders, but that is really just an exaggeration of the heart of
our culture. The Lord provides resources
and we consume them on ourselves. As if
boxes of “stuff” will somehow bring the peace and assurance we so desperately seek.
Do my words sound a little extreme? Or perhaps, the Spirit is convicting you
about your affection for the things of this world. Listen, at the core is an eternal struggle between
the natural and the supernatural. If you
have boxes and boxes of stuff that you can’t get rid of, not that you need
whatever is in the box, but when you see what is inside the box fascinates you –
draws you and you just cannot get rid of it.
Friend, you have a lust problem.
Hey, we all do. But God has given
us a new life free from the bondage of our old one.
God does not ask everyone to sell their house, quit their job, or move
to a third world country. But He commands everyone to keep Him first in their
heart, to reflect His Son in the way they live and relate to the world, to not
care if He does ask those things of them, to be willing to walk by faith and
not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7) We either do or we don’t. In the military,
when you march you step out with your left foot, which makes it the right or
correct foot. God’s ways are not the
world’s ways. God defines what is right,
which may look left to the world. We must resist the flesh and obey God by the
power of His Spirit and Word to keep in step with God.
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