The closer your relationship with Scripture and the older you get the more you see how the truth of the Bible plays out again and again. Not if, but when we ignore the guide book, user manual, moral compass, whatever you choose to call it, we suffer. We all suffer for things we can do nothing about, but there is another suffering that is brought on by our own self-determinism. We simply choose to do things our way, right now. Eventually always becomes today. It may indeed take a while, but the old saying about death and taxes is always eclipsed by Scripture, always.
Love is the reason for the do's and don'ts, but what parent is successful at convincing their child they are saying no because they love them? Who does not see the self-destructive force of disrespect, immorality, alcohol, drugs, greed, and the unnatural? If you choose to go to the dance with any or all of these you will never get what you hoped for, always more than you bargained for, and scars you'll never pay for. Ask the person trying to hitch-hike home with crushed toes, a broken heart and a defeated spirit.
The merry go round spins faster and faster and the noise level continues to rise, but eventually payday comes. My grandfather used to tell me, "Boy, you made your bed, now sleep in it."
It isn't as though we carefully pick our way through a mine field. No, we think we boldly go where no one has gone before, but billons precede us, billons thought things would be different for them and billions were wrong. Boys and girls there are consequences.
Love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with your entire mind, and your neighbor as yourself is the way God intends us to live. Can you love God if you don't know God? Do you believe life is natural or sustainable without God? Do you read God's word? Would you expect to find Jesus at a mega-church, with the wounded and the marginalized or with both? Do you know why?
Like it or not, deny it or not, we are all in this thing called 'life' together. Why can't we all just get along simply does not work in a world dominated by self-determinism instead of God's love.
Do screaming, yelling, profanity, laughing, jeering, finger pointing, accusing really drown out the reality of God's word? Does all this noise provide any sustainable comfort when reality begins to erode your glittering castle? Your self-made castle, like all the castles and empires before yours, will eventually be gone, as if it never existed. Do you ever think about that?
Do you have children? Will they build castles like yours? Will they likewise laugh and scorn at God as well as you? Their castle will also go the way of all man-made castles. What God said will continually stand amidst all the castle building. It is immovable, a monument, a reminder that a broken hearted God welcomes fewer and fewer children home, but God will keep on calling, waiting, searching for that last lamb, and then ...
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