Tag: choice

Categories
Christian Living

Consistently Faithful, Even In the Face of So Much Evil

I already know this to be true – you strive to be a person who is faithful. Faithful to your family, certainly. Probably most who read this strive to faithful to God. Maybe a lot of us even strive to be faithful to our employers. You strive to be a faithful person.

But in the struggle to be faithful, you have probably thought – “There sure is a lot of unfaithfulness and evil in the world today. So why am I trying so hard to remain faithful, when so many others are getting ahead by their unfaithfulness?”a sign with two opposing arrows, reminding us we have a choice to be faithful or to sin

You are right about the level of unfaithfulness around us, but before you get too upset about it, remember that things haven’t changed all that much in the past four thousand years. Joseph proves my point.

Joseph is so consistently faithful to God. And yet, a great deal of sin is constantly around him. It begins with his brothers who exhibit quite ungodly behavior:

  1. In Genesis chapter 35, Reuben has slept with one of his father’s concubines.
  2. The brothers were in some way unfaithful as shepherds of their father’s flocks, because Joseph gives a bad report about them to his father in chapter 37.
  3. And their jealousy makes them ready to kill their brother, even though they eventually decide to sell him into slavery.
  4. They make a pact to lie about this to their father.
  5. Then we have Judah’s sons who are wicked and are both killed by God due to their wickedness. (You’d have thought son #2 would have learned a lesson from the death of son #1).
  6. Judah makes a promise to his daughter-in-law, but then refuses to keep his word to her.
  7. While on a business trip, Judah sleeps with a woman he thinks is a prostitute, but who is actually his daughter-in-law who has tricked him.
  8. And with Joseph now in Egypt we learn that Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce him on multiple occasions.
  9. We also have the cupbearer who fails to keep his promise to Joseph.

This is a lot of sin and unfaithfulness within his family and in the relationships connected to him. And certainly there was the temptation to get ahead by following the same path. But Joseph maintains his integrity and character and his faith in God – living in a way that honors his Lord.sign that says "right is right even if no one is doing it" reminding us to be faithful to God

Isn’t this so very similar to our world today – a mess of sin – with people in our families and our communities and our places of work who are unfaithful to God. And so many around us would prefer that we join in with them, because doing so would help them feel less guilty about their unfaithfulness. It leads us to ask the question: “Will I give in, or will I be faithful and obedient like Joseph?”

The path of sin is easier, because it is a shortcut to something we want (at least we want it at that moment), but the actual costs are terribly high in the end.

God, help me to be faithful and obedient to You like Joseph was, even though so many around me have rejected Your guidance and tempt me to disobey Your word and Your will.

What Bible verse(s) help you defeat the temptations that come your way? Or who helps you stand strong against temptation, instead of pulling you towards it?

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Categories
Relationships

Choosing to Love Requires You to be Selfless. Love is Not a Feeling.

Choosing to love someone versus feeling loving toward someone. Should there be a difference? And why am I being asked to be selfless? Shouldn’t others be meeting my needs? As I mentioned in my last post, Gary Chapman identified Five Love Languages that people can express and need:

  • Affirming Words
  • Providing Gifts
  • Acts of Service
  • Quality Time
  • Physical Touch

    • All five of these can be important to us, but there is usually one that will be more important for you to receive than the other four.

    Without asking him or her, what do you think your spouse’s primary love language is?
    What do you think your spouse’s secondary love language is?
    Have your spouse do the free online test at 5lovelanguages.com to see if you are right.

    The primary and secondary love languages are seldom the same for a husband and wife. But that doesn’t mean you cannot fill each others’ tanks. Instead, you must each ask this question – Can I fill my spouse’s love tank even though it is different from how I naturally show love?
    photo of the feet of bride and groom on wedding day symbolizing selfless love
    Being “in love” is not a feeling. Love is something you choose to do for someone else. We know this to be true, but then we often operate as if love is a feeling. For example, we know it is a choice, because we say on our wedding day that we will be committed to one another for better or for worse. Therefore, you know that you must choose to love…even when times get “worse.”

    We also know love to be a choice based on how we choose to love our children. We tell them, “No matter what you do, I will always love you.” And then we fulfill that statement. Even when they mess up. Even when they hurt our feelings. Even when they disobey us or betray us. The selfless love of a parent remains – no matter what.

    And though we understand this with our children, too often we are unwilling to provide that same level of selfless love to our spouse – the person who we stood before God and everyone and said “I vow to love you till death do us part, even in times of sickness and even if things in life get worse.”

    We know that love is a choice and not a feeling because that is how we have chosen to love our children – unconditionally. Be sure to remind yourself that it is to be the same with your spouse – love is a choice, so choose to love your spouse unconditionally.

    If love is a choice, then we can choose to speak our spouse’s love language even when it is not our primary love language. We can decide to show them our love, even when the way they want to receive love isn’t the way we most naturally give it. We can choose to do this because, as the Bible says, “love is not self-seeking.” Choose to be selfless. Choose to love.

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    Categories
    Christian Living

    How You are Slowly Becoming Either a Saint or a Brute

    Every one of us find ourselves in the middle of the current of this River of Life.
    And it is naturally working to sweep us in a direction – pushing us along with a powerful force.
    If we decide to tread water, we find that we don’t stay in the same place, we are still being pushed further downstream. Unless we decide to engage in the hard work of swimming against the current, we find that we are constantly being pushed along with so many others by the river. And it is certainly easier to “go with the flow” and let the water carry us along. But when we get to the destination that the river is carrying us to, will we be satisfied with where we end up?

    We are familiar with the thought that our bodies are like machines, needing the right routine of food, rest and exercise if they are to run efficiently, and liable, if filled up with the wrong fuel (alcohol, drugs, poison) to lose their power of healthy functioning and ultimately to “seize up” entirely in physical death.

    What we are, perhaps, slower to grasp is that God wishes us to think of our souls in a similar way. As rational persons, we were made to bear God’s moral image — that is, our souls were made to “run” on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God and our fellows. If we abandon these practices, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls. Conscience atrophies; the sense of shame dries up; one’s capacity for truthfulness, loyalty, and honesty is eaten away; one’s character disintegrates. One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being dehumanized. This is one aspect of spiritual death. Richard Baxter was right to formulate the alternatives as either: “A Saint — or a Brute”… that, ultimately, is the only choice, and everyone, sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously opts for one or the other.
    (J. I. Packer in Knowing God)

    We are each becoming either a Saint or a Brute due to our choice of swimming against the current or letting the natural course of things sweep us along. It is easier to not engage in that list of “law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service.” Those things require hard work. But I don’t want my character to disintegrate as I let my conscience atrophy and my sense of shame dry up while floating along with everyone else. It is easier to “go with the flow.” But Christ calls each of us to be a saint – one of His holy people set apart to live for Him. That will require us to swim against the current and to look different than most everyone else. But getting to the right destination at the end of this life is worth it.