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Dinner with my lovelies. lovin my birthday weekend.

Three day weekend and my birthday – boy couldn’t ask for more.

Summer is officially here!

Praise the Lord! Was able to have lunch with my beautiful wife today. He is so good

I love her. Yes. That is what I am currently thinking about.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:19)

Reading this verse today I was astounded by my own wickedness. Even as a regenerate, blood bought, son of God, I am still in love with myself more than Jesus sometimes. That is a cold hard fact of life that I have become increasingly more aware of in myself recently that is very hard to deal with. Why am I still so easily lead astray by the deceitful schemes of the devil if I truly have the “mind of Christ” in me? Why does it seem like sometimes my proclivity is still for sin and self satisfaction instead of Jesus who came and died to wash me clean of these things? Jesus is the all and all. The bread of life of which I can feed and feed, and be truly fully satisfied yet righteously hunger for more. The world leaves me empty, but Jesus makes me full. Why then do I feast of the worlds death ridden bread, instead of the very bread of life, of whom all good things come?

Lord starve my heart of this world that I may come to thirst for you with an unquenchable thirst, that I may never have enough of you, and never want any of this world.

Have you ever caught yourself tempted to sin, but then rather than submitting to God’s word about it, you instead began to reason how it would be wrong to do what you are considering doing for all the other reasons other than it being an offense against the Lord? Here’s an example -

You’re driving down the highway doing the speed limit of 65. Then, you get tempted to join with the passing traffic and break the law by accelerating up to 70. Now, rather than preaching to yourself that we are to ‘obey the law of the land’(Rom. 13:1-2), you instead say something to yourself along the lines of, “no, I’m not going to speed, what if I got caught?”, or, “I’m not speeding, I could get a ticket”, and etc. and so on.

There is a significant problem within our hearts, that I want to argue is a significantly dangerous one, when we lean on our own understanding and not humbly throw ourselves on the commands of God (Prov. 3:4-6). But what’s the difference? In the example if your reasoning won out against temptation, then you clearly achieved the goal of not sinning, right? That’s what we’re after here anyway isn’t it? No.

Should we desire to sin or ever intentionally sin – no. However, willful obedience that is steeped in pride rather than humble submission makes us Pharisees and not Christians. In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus had this to say to the pharisees:

27″Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

The Pharisees were doing everything right, they were obeying the law, they weren’t speeding, or changing lanes to fast – Jesus even said they looked beautiful on the outside – so what’s the big deal? They were reasoning themselves in to obedience, by any means they could find – none of which included Jesus. God is not interested in moral people, and He will never commend His people for paganistic thinking that yields moralistic results – He wants a people who are going to let their reasoning be His words because they’ve realized that their own ways lead to death, but His, eternal life.

Don’t live a life of obedience that is void of Jesus. Obey because you love him (1 John 5:2,3). Don’t reason away temptation – rely on Him to pull you through it, and thank Him when He does.