Desperate Joy

  As you may or may not be aware, I am currently in prison. Prison, as you might expect, is filled with all manner of criminals. Of course, I am one of them, but my desire is to no longer commit crimes. Many of my neighbors have no such concerns, but rather are perfectly happy to continue breaking the law. This becomes an interesting dynamic. For the most part this law and rule breaking is not that serious. Usually, it involves using cell phones, drugs, or alcohol. These are clearly against the rules and if you get caught with any of these things you can get in serious trouble and either lose good time or have time added to your sentence. Then there are the smaller, less serious rules. Even among my Christian friends there are those who believe it is okay to break some of these rules. There is a policy here that we are not allowed to take any food out of the dining hall after meals. So even if we can't finish all the food on our tray either because we do not have the appetite o...

Those of us who have struggled with addiction know all too well what it feels like to be carried along by urges and cravings into chaotic and destructive behaviors. Against our better judgment, we progressively indulge in more strange, bizarre, and deviant activities. In the trance of the addiction, we find ourselves watching things and doing things that in the light of day we find disgusting, and in days past we never would have even found desirable.   We end up shaking our heads, puzzled as to how in the world we ended up doing what we did. We cannot make sense out of our own behaviors.  This was what it was like for me. It was like I was in a self-driving car with my hands duct taped behind my back. I knew what I was doing but had no idea what was causing it. There was no gap between stimulus and response. It was all blurred together. I would find myself zoned out in front of the computer clicking from one image and video to the next, unable to stop and unable to compr...

  When God calls us to follow Christ, he calls us to a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice. This comes in direct conflict with our own natural proclivities and the messaging from our culture, which encourages us to pursue every carnal desire and indulge every fleshly appetite. If we want something, especially sexually, we are told that is a good thing and we should seek to satisfy it. Our tendency is to focus on our physical needs and desires, and neglect the deeper, spiritual needs that we have. Many, if not all, of us addicts fell into the tar pit of addiction because we were seduced by those voices of self-indulgence. We listened to the cravings of our flesh and made self-gratification our highest priority. We ignored our spiritual needs and desires and settled instead for making our bodies feel good. What we inevitably found was a life desolate of emotional and spiritual substance. This is far from God's intentions for us. God is calling us to self-control and self-maste...

  The other day I tuned in to the pop radio station and I heard Katy Perry crooning about the dangers of falling in love, one of the lines said, "Make me your Aphrodite, make me your one and only, But don't make me your enemy, your enemy."  Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty and was one of the many false gods people long ago worshiped in place of the one true God. I am amazed at the diversity of gods and goddesses people once worshiped.   There were gods for the sun and moon, gods for lightning and rain, gods of fortune and fertility, and gods for death.   Whatever you might want or need, there was a god for you. We moderns are more sophisticated in many ways than those ancient Greeks, we do not worship gods and goddesses after all.   But idolatry is still alive and well.   While Ms. Perry may not be looking for anyone to make a statue of her and worship her, the message in the song is that we often take romantic love, the people we love...

  The winter Olympics in Beijing recently came to a close. I am always amazed and inspired by the feats of athleticism that these champions accomplish every four years. One of the things that most impresses me about these athletes is their tremendous level of dedication and self-mastery. They spend hours each day training for years upon years, pushing their minds and bodies to the limits of human endurance. They eat only according to carefully structured diets and often forgo social and family events so they can compete and train. Their entire being is laser focused on their sport and on winning gold, every hindrance to that goal is set aside. They push through injuries and setbacks and as a result accomplish some of the most amazing feats of skill, strength, and endurance. I am not sure if the Olympics were a thing when Paul was writing his letters, but he certainly had seen foot races before. He used these athletes as an inspiration for the church in Corinth and for us today, ...

  We live in a culture that is saturated with lust. It seems everywhere we look we are inundated with images, songs and videos that are either explicitly sexual or are heavy with innuendo. It is like we cannot even tell a joke these days without making it into something sexual. This makes for a challenging environment for those of us who are committed to following the Lord with all our hearts. I have been a Christ follower from when I was a child, and since puberty fired my veins with sexual desire, controlling lust has been a daily challenge. One area of difficulty for me has always been masturbation. There have been a couple periods in my life when I resigned myself to thinking that there was nothing really wrong with masturbation, but for most of my life, I have believed that it was wrong and have fought to control it. In the previous post we looked at the connection between masturbation and fantasy. We saw that if we are indulging in lust in our hearts, even if we are not...

  Abortion has been in the news lately as the Supreme Court readies to hear arguments around the abortion ban the state of Mississippi recently enacted. It is an important case during an important time. I pray for God to give the justices wisdom as they make their decisions. Abortion is certainly a thorny issue, but as I have argued in this blog, the Bible teaches that God is a God of life, he cultivates and cherishes life, and faithful Christians should always come down on the side of life. Abortion has been a central pillar of the sexual revolution and has opened the door to more and more uncleanness. But there is an issue that has preceded abortion in history that has had its share in the loosening of sexual morals, and that issue is birth control. This is the third post in a series on the topic. My sister is a physician's assistant, day in and day out, she is working with people to try and improve their health. She often laments that her patients refuse to make even simple chan...