The Desire That Leads To Destruction

But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. I Timothy 6:8- 10

Did you catch that? Verse eight, did you see it? I don’t ever think a verse ever hurt me as much as that one did this morning.

“But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content.” It still stings.

You see my list was little longer. Okay, a lot longer, and I thought I was being all holy with how short I was keeping it. I mean, I don’t want anything too outrageous, a house with a big porch and bathtub, a new car to replace the gas guzzling truck I drive, a laptop that wasn’t a Toshiba, a piece of land with a creek and lots of hills and trees, a few new clothes, maybe a hot tub to soak away some of these knots in my shoulders, one of those fancy oil diffusers that can cure cancer and give me super powers, and a bunch of books. Alright, a whole bunch of books, so many books that even I knew I was boarding on intellectual gluttony, but I wanted them for the right reasons so it had to be okay, right?

But that’s not what my Bible says I need to be content. Just food and clothing, both of which I have and so much more besides.  No amount of self-righteous justification can negate what God has told us, and as much as my stubborn heart wants to cling to my supposed right to have more and wallow in the unjustness of being denied, I have been faced with the choice of obedience or rebellion with my attitude. Now any move I make from this point forward is deliberate faith in or denial of his word. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

It is easy to justify the desire to be rich. Do you know what I could accomplish with a million or so dollars? The good I could do with that amount of money? I do. I have played out the scenario a million times in my head, and I think of how please God would be with my generosity and vision.

But somewhere along the way, I fell into the trap of thinking that he needed me to be rich in order accomplish all this great and wonderful stuff. Slowly, my heart was turned away from his amazing ability to act despite circumstance or perceived resources and I began to think that success relied upon my financial status. My view of God became small, and my sense of self became far too great.

You see, the snare isn’t the money. It’s the desire that entraps us, for I know of no desire that is ever satisfied with what is before it, with what it has had. Desire always craves more – more money, more power, more significance, and everything else promised by our ideas of wealth. So we are tempted to lie, to cheat, to steal, to break promises, and even to betray those we love. Because in our twisted sense of reality it will be okay if we just have more, we can buy back the love we might lose, we can buy back the reputation we destroy, and we can buy back the relationships we have betrayed once we have more. But that is not how it works, not in truth, not in reality. For there will never be enough, we will always be found lacking in our own eyes, certain that our failure to have more is the same as the failure to be more.

Once we have crossed that line, we are rejecting the truth that God’s love for us is based in who we are and not what we have, then desperation is all that remains. Senseless and harmful choices will follow in close succession as we continue in a cycle that will consume all that we had and all that we are in the futile attempt to appease a desire that will never be satisfied. Destruction and ruin are all that will be left to us, not because God has forgotten or neglected us, but because this is the reality we chose when we wandered from the faith that once sustained us. The pangs we will endure, we inflict on ourselves, and there is none to blame but the one who chose to nurture the desire that God warned would bring our destruction.

But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content, secure in the knowledge that we are children of Father who declares us priceless and of unspeakable value. For that is riches that no power on earth can take away.

Adult Content

At least once a week I have a conversation that goes like this, “I love Jesus. I consider myself to be a Christian. I know that the Bible says that it is wrong, but I believe that God understands why I ___(fill in the blank  with personal pet sin)___.” Now, if you are one of those people who work those phrases into conversations with other Christians and don’t want to get your feelings hurt, you might just want to back away slowly. However, if you are ready for some raw, ugly truth and you think you are adult enough to handle it, keep reading.

Let’s begin with the first statement, “I love Jesus.” No, no you don’t. You love the idea of Jesus and a Jesus who does not conform to Biblical standards. You love the Jesus you made in your image, the passive, cowardly Jesus who has no backbone, who is devoid of holiness and isn’t all that into justice.
A Jesus without these attributes is easier to love. He has no feelings to hurt, no holiness to offend and no sense of justice to violate. You can prop him in the corner of the room and take comfort in knowing that nothing you do wounds his heart or injures your relationship. A Jesus like this never makes you feel guilty for what you have done or who you have been. In short, he is just another accessory to help you feel good about yourself, and nothing more.

And this attitude leads to a lot of confusion, hurt feelings on your part, and frustration with this faith we call Christianity, because the first thing you do when you get in a jam is start praying to the image of Jesus you created. You will cry to him, beg him, and demand of him that he fix whatever issues you are facing in your life, and when he does nothing you resent the fact that he failed you.

But, really, what else did you expect? You denied him the power and the right to be life changing force in your world the minute you stripped him of his true identity. You rejected his holiness, you told him he had no right to be hurt by your actions, and you flat out refused to allow any room for him to be a just God when you said that all he was allowed to be was love, acceptance, and tolerance for you decisions.

You see, God has a funny way of giving you exactly what you asked for. The problem was you weren’t smart enough to know what it is you requested. You asked for a god who was too small to move against you and your sinful desires and a god that powerless is too weak to move against the other evils of this world. Congratulations on winning such a useless prize. I hope you enjoyed it.

The second statement: “I consider myself to be a Christian.” Good for you, I consider myself to be an octopus, and yet nothing about me conforms to the definition of this beast. Are you still sure you are a Christian or is that just lie you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?

Third statement: “I know the Bible says it is wrong, but I believe that God understands.” Okay, I will give you this one, God does understand. He understands that you are lazy, selfish, and undisciplined enough to think that giving up whatever you are hanging onto would cost you more than the agony he endured on the cross. He understands that you have placed your desires above his and in doing so declared that you are smarter, wiser, and more enlightened than he is. He gets it he really does, because you are not the first being to say this to him. Just check out Ezekiel 28 and see how that worked out for the first one to say such things to him.

But that kind of Jesus sounds so judgmental, and the guilt! Surely a God who loves me doesn’t want to me to feel guilty all the time. God wants me to feel good about myself because he loves me, and he accepts me as I am. Such are the counter arguments, I am told.

What people don’t realize they are telling me when they make those statements is that they have never been in love and maybe they have never experienced love. Love, real love, never leaves you as it finds you, and it does not condone or support you hurting yourself. Real love is bold enough to call you out on your self-destructive behavior, and it will risk hurting your feelings, even losing you for a season, if that is what takes to make you realize what you are doing to yourself – and God’s love is real! It is bold and full of courage, and love like that inspires us to a courage to face ourselves as we could not do on our own.

When our love for God does not inspire us to place absolute trust in him, when we think that our excuses for sin are greater than his command, and when we act as if God should be content to allow us to continue as we are and never seek something greater for ourselves than we can create without him, then we are not acting in love, we are not acting in faith, but rather we are lying to ourselves and to the world. Love changes us. If there is no change, then we have not known love no matter how much we may protest, and if you have not known love than you have not known God.