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Stuck In Immaturity By Life's Pleasures
Brian Mashburn
March 18, 2018
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Life’s Pleasures vs. God
Have you ever considered why it is that you enjoy what it is that you enjoy? Some people love sports. Others love shopping. Some love airplanes, others trains, others cars. Some love travel, others love books. The list is endless.
Why? Why do people love what they love? I, for one, believe that, ultimately, it comes from practice.
Oh, does our personality play a part? Certainly. Do we have a built in “bent” that might draw us one particular direction or another? I think so. But for the most part (or perhaps I should say, for the most important part), I believe we cultivate the tastes we have. We train ourselves to enjoy what we enjoy, until it almost becomes a part of us. We develop our tastes by investing in them.
If I’m right, then those who enjoy God and His things do so because they invest in Him and His things. Through this, they mature in their love for God and His things.
"Life’s pleasures," Jesus says in Luke 8:14, when allowed to grow in our hearts, choke this spiritual maturing like weeds choke plants in a garden. Paul identifies what can happen if this weed isn’t rooted out when he says, "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3:2-5)
It is time to weed out some of the fleeting pleasures of this world, replace them with an investment in God and His things, cultivating the only joy that will satisfy and last!