“Listen, my child, to what your father teaches you. Don’t neglect your mother’s teaching. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and clothe you with honor” (Proverbs 1:8-9 NLT).
Do you know the first requirement for salvation from your sins? Admitting that you are a sinner and taking responsibility for the choices you make. The Lord is little by little revealing to me the ploy of the devil. Our adversary is incessantly whispering into people’s ears, “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to accept responsibility for the choices you make and the way you live. You are your own god. The captain of your fate. To heck with everyone else. Do your own thing.”
That lie goes back to the Garden of Eden. Remember how Adam and Eve responded after they bought the devil’s lie and ate the forbidden fruit? The LORD God asked, “Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
“Yes,” Adam admitted, “but it was the woman you gave me who brought me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Then the LORD God asked the woman, “How could you do such a thing?”
“The serpent tricked me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it” (Genesis 3:11‑13 NLT).
Notice that Adam blamed Eve, but in reality, he was blaming God. “It was the woman YOU gave me. If You had not given me that woman, I would have never eaten the fruit.” Yeah, right. Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on. The “blame game” has been played for eons and is still very popular today. I watched a television program the other night in which a parent sued a beer company because their advertisements lured their teenage son into alcoholism and killed him.
I’m not an advocate for the alcohol industry. I’ve seen too much misery from the stuff. But excuse me… did they make that boy drink beer? What if their advertisements made it look like drinking beer would meet his emotional needs for acceptance, was it not still his choice to drink it? Television makes illicit sex and adultery appear to be okay, but does that give me an excuse for being unfaithful to my wife? What is the world coming to? Where have we gone wrong? I’m a little homesick for some old-fashioned values that are learned in the school of hard knocks. I like what Paul Harvey has to say…
“We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I’d like better. I’d really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would. I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated. I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen. It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep. I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in. I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it’s all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he’s scared, I hope you let him. When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you’ll let him/her. I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely. On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don’t ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won’t be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom. If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books. When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head. I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy/girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like. May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole. I don’t care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don’t like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend. I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle. May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the Holidays. I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor’s window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Hanukkah/Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand. These things I wish for you… tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it’s the only way to appreciate life.
One reason the Lord Jesus died on the cross was to give us a choice. Before Christ came and paid our sin debt on the cross, we had no choice. We were blind and bound by sin, taken captive by the devil to do his will. When Jesus came with His gift of salvation, He merely opened the door to our cage. Whether we fly out to freedom, or remain imprisoned is our choice. God has made a way. We are responsible to accept or reject His offer. And we must live eternally with the consequences of the choice we make. The tough times, disappointments and heartaches of life make the choice easy for me. What about you?
“Heavenly Father, what a wonderful God You are. I thank You for allowing me to experience the pain of my poor choices. That pain has made Your grace and love so marvelously apparent and appealing to me. Thanks for opening the door to my cage. Thanks for the wings to fly out. Thanks for the winds of adversity that lift me above my circumstances and closer to You. Amen.”
Blessings,
Kenny
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