How To Waste Your Life Before 30 – Part 4
This is the final installment in a four part series of postings about on the wasted life. Check out parts one, two, and three.
If you always take the easy way out.
People who take the easy path don’t do great things. As Jesus is talking to his disciples (Luke 9:22023), he is telling them that he is on his way to Jerusalem and he knows that this will be his last trip. What would you do if you knew your next mission trip would be your last? What if you knew before hand that the next time your serve at the homeless shelter one of the people you serve shanks you with a knife and kills you. Would you still go? Much of what it means to be a Christian is seeing our personal Jerusalem’s and marching full speed ahead towards it.
If marriage and romance means more to you than life itself.
Rachel was barren and wanted a son more than anything. She was willing to go to any extreme to get one, such as giving her maid to her husband so she could bear her a son (Genesis 30:1-8). Rachel’s desire for a son was an idol to her, so much that she was willing to sin in order to obtain one. But that wasn’t enough for her. God removed Rachel’s barrenness and she bore a son she named Joseph, which means “may he add”. She wanted more. So God gave her what she wanted. She gave birth to yet another son and this would be her last because this one killed her.
There is a very important lesson in this for us. Don’t think that just because God allows something your think is “good” in your life that it somehow constitutes his endorsement of your behavior. Be careful. Just because you have an opportunity to date someone or get married, this does not mean that God approves. I hear guys and girls say that they know God wants them to date or else God would not have sent that person in the first place. That’s not always true. When we become so focused on getting in a relationship, the risk that the relationship becomes an idol in high. When relationships become our idol, we can become so blinded by infatuation that we fail to see who the person really is. Then it becomes easy to justify the relationship as God-sent. Why not? It feels so good. And if it feels good, it must be right, right?
Sometimes God allows us to get what we want in order for us to suffer the devastating consequences of our covetous desires.
Robert
I love theology and the challenge of making deep teachings non-boring. Let's face it, most of the time we hear theological teaching, it really is boring. Does it really have to be that way? Nope.
