How to Prevent Spiritual Insanity

Deut 8:10-18

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.  Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God…. You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth….

 

Rom 1:21-25

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools … They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen.

 

 

There are a lot of good reasons to give thanks.  For one thing, it is just the right thing to do, considering all that we have been given.  But it’s good to keep in mind that the failure to give thanks and to praise God sets you up for disaster.  When we fail to acknowledge God as the giver of every gift we become self-centered rather than God-centered.  We start thinking that we are the ones who have produced these good things in our lives, or we give credit to a false god—in other words we become spiritually insane.

 

What a blessing that as a nation we have a day set aside for thanksgiving.  What a great reminder that all the good things we enjoy are gifts from above.  Of course, we need more than one day to keep ourselves from going spiritually insane.  Our lives should be characterized by gratitude.  Our speech should always include thanksgiving—it’s what keep you from going crazy.

 

Have a great celebration tomorrow!

 

Brian

 

 

No Band of Brothers this Friday.  See you on Dec. 2

 

When Will You Quit Pornography?

That’s the question God asked me many years ago.  At the time I was choosing to ignore his voice and believe the lies of the enemy.

Lies like....

“It’s not hurting anyone”--(LIE.   It’s hurting you and your wife, or future wife, and your children.  Secrets kill.  Fantasy sex creates a messed up view of the real thing). 

“It’s just a private thing, it doesn’t affect me spiritually” —(LIE.  It undermines intimacy between you and God.  You know in your heart he condemns it).

“God created beauty to be enjoyed” —(LIE.  Very clever, but no, some beauty is not for you).

“When it really starts affecting my life I’ll quit” —(LIE.  The words of a slave who is trying to convince himself he’s free).

“This is the last time” —(LIE.  That feeling of revulsion and self-loathing ebbs away sooner than you think).

About eight and a half years ago God was gracious to me—my wife found me out.  The thing that brought me to repentance and has enabled me to stay away from porn for 8 ½ years was the wounded look in her eyes and the shock and confusion in the faces of our children.  Never again.

I’m troubled by the number of men who follow Christ in many areas of their life and yet do not renounce pornography, or can’t seem to break free.   Many men have struggled with it for so long that they can’t imagine life without it.   How can God bless that?

Let’s reject the justifications and half-hearted attempts to get control.  Some of you reading this may need to get rid of your computer and the data plan with your phone.  At least get some filtering or reporting software (by the way—if you know the password, the software is useless).

More importantly we need to address the boredom, loneliness, anger, depression, fear, woundedness etc. that drive us to use porn as an emotional narcotic.  “More than Conquerors” or “Celebrate Recovery”  or private counseling can help you in those areas.

If anyone reading this is ready to be free please get in touch.

Brian

 

Are you Free?

Are you Free?

Ahhhhh, my last Friday of Daylight savings time.  That arbitrary designation of the measurement of the passing of the sun. That government ruling that is slowly turning us into a nation of midnight loving zombies.  I firmly believe there are thousands of questions that you will never hear in heaven, and one of them is “what time is it?” Thank. You. God. Another will probably be “what’s he do for a living?”

We put lots of judgments on things and people every day. We tend to judge worth by money, looks, achievement, you name it. Osoela McCarty was a black woman in Hattisburg, MS, who, most of her life, did laundry for other people (for 78 years). You can imagine that outside of her family and customers, no one knew who she was or cared. Late in her life, she donated $150,000 to USM to, in her words, send someone’s kids to college. Instantly, she was in every newspaper, TV show, you name it for the achievement of saving this money and then selflessly giving it to an institution that had never recognized or affirmed her in any way.

Why did we respond to her gift in this way? I believe that deep down we are amazed at the kind of selflessness that says “I am free from your judgments. Free to live and love on my own terms, rather than believe the place the world wants to put me in”.

Men, we were born to live in a paradise where we walked with God and everything we needed to be a human came from Him. We walked away from that and ever since we have been comparing ourselves to others. I sincerely believe that most of the unmanly things we do are rooted in ourselves going to others to tell us who we are rather than God. It is the rare man indeed that is not captive to public opinion, or private opinion, for that matter but rather lives by God’s opinion. That, my friends, is freedom indeed. And for most of us, it doesn’t even compute. We don’t even question Daylight savings time, much less how we got like we are.

You want to do something courageous this weekend? Go spend some time alone with God and ask Him what He thinks about you. As a man. Then live from that, instead of the judgments the fallen voices of this world has put upon you.

Enjoy the journey, my friends

Alex