April 27, 2012

• NEVER CHANGING, EVER CONDEMNED

   

   

  STUCK!

   

  

  "Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots?
  Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."

  Jeremiah 13:23

   

  "Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin."'

  John 8:34
  

   

   

   

  Do you ever feel or think yourself stuck?  Ever feel condemned; unchanging; cut off; broken beyond repair; hopeless??  If ever there was a person who should feel stuck I'm your man.  For most of my life I've heard "It's genetic you are just born this way."  Long before Lady Gaga's song, "Born This Way" people have been preaching "You can't help it, so you might as well accept it and learn to live with it."  After a decade of looking for facts to support "born this way," I learned there are no facts to support "born this way," thinking.  No one is "born this way."  Michael Phelps was not born a swimmer, let alone an Olympic champion swimmer.  Kobe Bryant was not born a basketball player; famous pianist Liberace was not born either a pianist or gay.  And Barack Obama was not born to be President of the United States.   Sorry, biology simply cannot dictate such complex outcomes.  We're not talking about hair or eye color, biology cannot dictate choices we make which subtly or drastically change the course and behaviors which lead to future lifestyle habits.  All you straight people out there...Yep, not specifically born straight either.  Now "straight" is the result biology stacks the deck in favor of, but biology cannot completely dictate career, celebrity, criminality, sexual preference, addictions, or any other complex human behaviors.    
  

  This is part of the damned human nature. We will live with the greatest evil that we know. No matter how evil our current situation, in our estimation it is the lessor evil. To our broken perception the unknown is the greater evil.

  When we have no god but ourselves we cannot comprehend anything but ourselves, the unknown is threatening. When God makes Jesus known to us, God plants in us a taste of eternity. With God the greatest evil is what we've been, and the circumstances, in which he finds us.

  With Christ the greater evil is the known. The good of God is that he will not, and cannot fail to bring us into eternity with him. The greater evil is that we settle for only what we've known. The unknown may take us into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but if this is where we find God, then it is the way to eternal life, and not death.

  The death of our physical bodies is assured, but in Christ we proclaim, 1 Corinthians 15:54-55,

  "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

  Morte!? C'est moi!!

  • 9:13 AM
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