Ends and Means

Matthew Henry writes, "All who are chosen to happiness in the end, are chosen to holiness as the means." 

I have had this quote in my head for a couple weeks now. There is a great reminder to us in a culture obsessed with happiness. Over and over again we see people come through our doors prepared to end commitments and covenants because someone has told them, "Don't you deserve to be happy?" This very thing has lead to the breakdown of our lives, and it has lead us also to our addictiveness. 

This is the very nature of addiction. Things are addicting because they always leave you wanting more, and they destroy you all along the way. They cannot fulfill you. Whether it is sex or substances. Whether it is more stuff in our closets, driveways, or pockets. We are addicted to these things when we think the only important thing is our happiness, and we start to believe these things will make us happy. And they do…for only a moment. That is the very point of these things; to only make you feel good and happy for a short time so that you want it again. Do you have something you desire and crave more than Jesus and a connection with Jesus? Do you see how CRAZY and absolutely LUDICROUS it is for me to desire and crave anything more than I crave a loving real connection with Jesus Christ?

A Hypocrites Precursor

What you read on these pages will not always reflect perfectly my life's actions.  Thus the struggle of living out the way we wish we could.  Thus the fight to do what we want to do instead of doing what we do not want to do, and what we do not want to do...this we do.

I am a writer.  This means I love to write.  This means I express well through written (typed) word.  But I am also a daily-broken human being with imperfect feelings, hurts, pains, angers and frustrations.  I resound the words of Phillip Yancey, "I soon discover that I write about spiritual disciplines far better than I practice them."  The concepts I write about, valid as they may be, are nevertheless hard to live.  Does this mean I do not WANT to live them?  Of course not, but I suck at it.  The reason righteousness is so hard is simply because I suck at it.

This challenges my comment toward pastors, teachers and Christians, "Practice what you preach."  Who am I to say they are not trying to practice what they preach, but like me, remain children of an Abba who understands they are humans who cannot wish themselves into perfect and righteous action.  They who struggle to do what they wish they would, but it does not and should not take away from their exhausting desire to fight for righteousness and holiness and unconditional love received and given.