Op;en your arms to God's heaven above and let HIs Son shine down on you.
For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. - 1 Peter 2:16
I find the words of the Apostle Peter who is the author of the books carrying his own name very powerful but they can be confusing. When we first read those words, they can make us think they are contradictory, but they are anything but. No, Peter is using the term slaves for our relationship with God when we accept Him as who He is to mean that we know we are His creation, that we are to follow His guidance from our belief in Him and to live for Him. That means we trust Him completely, that we know He will never fail us and always lead us to the goal we seek through that belief, eternal salvation.
Contrast that with sin and all of its possible components that can be disguised and look to be something we can't live without out. Following our mortal and weak self and our desires only leads to disaster and in the end, ultimate death and darkness. And we see it right here on earth and if not careful, we can allow it to take us to destruction. It can be many things, some more prevalent as likely attractions. First, there is money and power, for money usually also leads to power as well. When we worship money instead of God and put all our efforts toward that end, it can end in us thinking we are invincible and can do anything we want and with that comes the idea of power, as in we can buy anything or anyone we want.
Another big one is lust. We can lust after many things including property, but the most common example is lusting after the pleasures of the flesh. And the flesh is a very tempting thing but it usually leads again to disaster through destroyed marriages and families and the creation of a desire for more and more.
There are also alcohol addiction and drugs, but even things like gluttony and treating someone else as a substitute for God, or even placing trust and putting an unjustified value on something else that grabs our attention can grab control over us if we are weak. In this day and age of less personal conversation and more use of automated measures, it can be an addiction to a smart phone and/or social media. More and more evidence is coming out that the overuse of social media is bad medicine for a normal life as we substitute it more and more for real interpersonal relationships and person-to-person contact. Any of us who use it considerably know how it can create in us the automatic reaction of wanting to know first thing in the morning what your social media "friends" are up to and I can say that I'm as guilty as the next person. And it can then sometimes create in us the belief that we can use it as a prime means of getting the word out on things we want to expose to others like something so simple as a book. But, on deeper retrospect, we see that in reality in today's world it is just another big corporate endeavor to lure you in and trap you if possible. Is that the kind of thing God wants from us? Likely not.
I have recently been using it for much of my marketing efforts on my writing, yet in recent months I have found that the rules are constantly changing with little if any notice it was happening and with no reasons given. Things like finding out suddenly that the ability to share your work is being blocked or even sending posts from what is a valid site for the use you use it for being halted for such unexplained reasons such as "it violates community standards," which when researched are vague at best and don't match up with the material they are blocked for.
Life is a continual learning experience, however, and little setbacks of this type are likely allowed as a way for God to show us that we are putting our interests and faith in things that are not worthy of our trust. After all and quite candidly, only God is worthy of such actions. And I vow that going forward while I might take a look at social media and spend a few minutes now and then having a little fun with it, it is now time to devote much more worthwhile efforts like using my own independent site to do the same things. After all, I created it, I dedicated it to God and I try to focus on how God leads me to do the things I am supposed to do. And going forward, it's what I intend to do and invest my own personal sweat equity to doing it better and better.
Now some might say this hasn't been a godly exercise which my Sunday morning blog is designed for. But I will say in response that anytime we find a weakness that indicates our reliance sometimes on something other than God, we need to free ourselves from it and press on in a way more pleasing to God. So that's what I intend to do and I hope those of you who read my work will still do so here, on this blog site, rather than there, on social media. I'll put reminders up there with a few pictures as well from time to time, but I will focus on a "New Me" approach. And I'm counting on God, in whom I pledge my trust on everything, to show me the way. He's brought me this far and I expect He will continue to direct me wherever and however he wants me to go forward.
God bless you all and have a blessed Sunday indeed. Now it's off to teach a Bible lesson and attend worship on this Sunday Morning Coming Down.
I find the words of the Apostle Peter who is the author of the books carrying his own name very powerful but they can be confusing. When we first read those words, they can make us think they are contradictory, but they are anything but. No, Peter is using the term slaves for our relationship with God when we accept Him as who He is to mean that we know we are His creation, that we are to follow His guidance from our belief in Him and to live for Him. That means we trust Him completely, that we know He will never fail us and always lead us to the goal we seek through that belief, eternal salvation.
Contrast that with sin and all of its possible components that can be disguised and look to be something we can't live without out. Following our mortal and weak self and our desires only leads to disaster and in the end, ultimate death and darkness. And we see it right here on earth and if not careful, we can allow it to take us to destruction. It can be many things, some more prevalent as likely attractions. First, there is money and power, for money usually also leads to power as well. When we worship money instead of God and put all our efforts toward that end, it can end in us thinking we are invincible and can do anything we want and with that comes the idea of power, as in we can buy anything or anyone we want.
Another big one is lust. We can lust after many things including property, but the most common example is lusting after the pleasures of the flesh. And the flesh is a very tempting thing but it usually leads again to disaster through destroyed marriages and families and the creation of a desire for more and more.
There are also alcohol addiction and drugs, but even things like gluttony and treating someone else as a substitute for God, or even placing trust and putting an unjustified value on something else that grabs our attention can grab control over us if we are weak. In this day and age of less personal conversation and more use of automated measures, it can be an addiction to a smart phone and/or social media. More and more evidence is coming out that the overuse of social media is bad medicine for a normal life as we substitute it more and more for real interpersonal relationships and person-to-person contact. Any of us who use it considerably know how it can create in us the automatic reaction of wanting to know first thing in the morning what your social media "friends" are up to and I can say that I'm as guilty as the next person. And it can then sometimes create in us the belief that we can use it as a prime means of getting the word out on things we want to expose to others like something so simple as a book. But, on deeper retrospect, we see that in reality in today's world it is just another big corporate endeavor to lure you in and trap you if possible. Is that the kind of thing God wants from us? Likely not.
I have recently been using it for much of my marketing efforts on my writing, yet in recent months I have found that the rules are constantly changing with little if any notice it was happening and with no reasons given. Things like finding out suddenly that the ability to share your work is being blocked or even sending posts from what is a valid site for the use you use it for being halted for such unexplained reasons such as "it violates community standards," which when researched are vague at best and don't match up with the material they are blocked for.
Life is a continual learning experience, however, and little setbacks of this type are likely allowed as a way for God to show us that we are putting our interests and faith in things that are not worthy of our trust. After all and quite candidly, only God is worthy of such actions. And I vow that going forward while I might take a look at social media and spend a few minutes now and then having a little fun with it, it is now time to devote much more worthwhile efforts like using my own independent site to do the same things. After all, I created it, I dedicated it to God and I try to focus on how God leads me to do the things I am supposed to do. And going forward, it's what I intend to do and invest my own personal sweat equity to doing it better and better.
Now some might say this hasn't been a godly exercise which my Sunday morning blog is designed for. But I will say in response that anytime we find a weakness that indicates our reliance sometimes on something other than God, we need to free ourselves from it and press on in a way more pleasing to God. So that's what I intend to do and I hope those of you who read my work will still do so here, on this blog site, rather than there, on social media. I'll put reminders up there with a few pictures as well from time to time, but I will focus on a "New Me" approach. And I'm counting on God, in whom I pledge my trust on everything, to show me the way. He's brought me this far and I expect He will continue to direct me wherever and however he wants me to go forward.
God bless you all and have a blessed Sunday indeed. Now it's off to teach a Bible lesson and attend worship on this Sunday Morning Coming Down.
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