I want it now!

Weather Report From Heaven: Sunny and bright, with an abundance of light and lots of singing and rejoicing.


Bible Verse of the Day: Matthew 7:13-14 " Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."


To simply say we live in a culture that lives for instant gratification would be a huge understatement. You deserve it and  if it makes you feel good , then go for it is the mantra of the day. Of course, there is never any mention of the consequences or of the destruction that can follow when we make short sighted decisions to gratify our sinful desires without considering the long term implications.


Lust, anger and greed are the primary drivers of our sinful impulses that need to be satiated and they are very strong  influencers indeed. We see a beautiful woman walking down the street and we want to have her for our own. The great King David can certainly relate to that as he fell hook, line and sinker for his friend Uriah's wife Bathsheba while seeing her bath on the roof one day. Even though God had blessed David mightily, he still felt lacking on the inside, to the point where his lustful temptations prompted him to indulge his sexual desires without even stopping to consider the consequences, which as it turns out were quite severe. His impetuous decision would lead to a deeper trail of sins, including lying, deception and even murder of his friend Uriah in order to have the desires of his flesh fulfilled. One of the greatest consequences was the devastation he caused to his own family through his sinful behavior, which led to the death of the child he had conceived with Bathsheba. God cannot sit idly by while we bath in our sin and iniquity. He cannot be mocked, for whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. David was deeply repentant when the prophet Nathan revealed the depths of his sins against God to him and it caused him great physical, spiritual and emotional trauma. David had realized a great truth: that for every action there is a reaction and his sin had led directly to his suffering and angst which plagued him for quite a long time.


David fell into the same lustful trap that plagues us all still today, a short term gratification that leads to long term consequences and great suffering. We are all vulnerable to the same fleshly forces that swept David away and caused him to lose sight of the "narrow" road in favor of the easy or pleasurable road. The evil one knows the strength of our fleshly desires as described in Galatians 5 as a battle that is always raging against our spiritual being to do the right thing and to follow God's directions. Sometimes we give into our fleshly temptations and we lose the battle, and the consequences leave us dazed. Unless we have repentant heart's like David, and turn to God alone for our forgiveness, we will continue to bring about great suffering into our lives as a result of our need to have it now.


Our society has bought into the temptation to take the easy road, rather than to persevere down the narrow road that is referred to in todays bible verse. It is the fear based tenant that advertisers use to pray on consumers, that the media uses to destroy lives with the message of do whatever you feel like, when you feel like it and to hell with the consequences. Lust is one strong example. Have sex with whomever you want, whenever you want, and don't worry about the risk of STD's or a baby conceived out of wedlock. But what about greed? We hear the messages about what money can buy you and say yes, we want it and we want it now! A $100,000 car or a $5,000,000 house we can't nearly afford, oh well, we deserve it and besides we will look really great in it and it will attract beautiful ladies to us. No mention or thought of the financial consequences that will lead us into bankruptcy. Live for the now and consequences be damned. Of course, you can but a house but not a home. Or you can buy sex, but not love. Or you can buy a title but not respect. Yet we never stop to ponder these truisms because we want to look good in the world's eyes and don't care as much of how we look in God's eyes.  John 12;43 warns us of the faultiness in thinking this way. God should come first, always!


What about anger in our lives that things aren't going the way we thought they would or the way we think we deserve? We hear the messages that someone else is to blame and someone is going to have to pay for my unhappiness. Then we think, I will use deceit or distortion to get things back in order the way they should be, and if that doesn't work I will take it out on those around me with a bitter attitude and a hateful heart. No mention or thought of some internal soul searching or prayer time alone with the Creator of the Universe to ask for His direction, guidance and wisdom.


 In a me first world, there is no time for introspection, only for consumption of pleasurable experiences. Instant Gratification rules. However, is it really any different today than it has always been? Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup in one of the most egregious acts of the bible in pointing out our weakness to fulfill short term desires at the expense of priceless, long term inheritances. Esau placed a higher value on a physical, short term satisfaction of having a bowl of soup to quench his appetite than on a life of peace and relationship with God as head of household that could have led to his eternal greatness.


This story of Esau and Jacob is just one of many in the bible that illustrates that throughout human history, we are all prone to give up greater future rewards for immediate gratifications. The adversary is well aware of this and is always tempting us to succumb to our desires of immediate gratification so he can deny us the better plan that God has in store for us. This is why it is so important to constantly be in prayer, as 1st Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing, to help us understand our weaknesses and to be prepared to ask Jesus to help us in our daily battles against our flesh. God reminds of us of this struggle and of our need for dependence upon him in order to have a chance in his fight in 1st Corinthians 10: 13 " No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."  But here is the rub: We don't want to listen to God! We don't want to pray and ask for His strength and protection. We want to do what makes us feel good now! When the consequences come, we want to try and fix it on our own, which only leads to more sin and helplessness, but we don't want to feel like we need Him to fix our mess. Oh the futility of our thinking!


In many ways, when we do finally repent and come around to prayer and to seeking God's  forgiveness, , discernment and wisdom for the messes we have created in our lives, like King David finally did, we then begin a new struggle of what and how to pray. We treat God like He is some kind of cosmic vending machine where we submit our requests into the machine and wait for his solutions to instantly pop back out. Even here, our impatience and desire for instant gratification can be astounding. CS Lewis says that someday we'll be far more grateful for our prayers that didn't get answered then for the ones that did. This is because our prayers are often misguided and lack alignment with God's eternal plan for our lives. We pray for comfort in the midst of our trials instead of character to be built up in us during them. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through. We ask for God to quickly extricate us out of difficult circumstances instead of asking God what he wants to get out of those difficult circumstances. Sometimes though God not giving us what we think we need or want is actually Him protecting us from unintended consequences.


As Psalm 46:10 says, sometimes He just wants us to be still and acknowledge that He is God and He will be exulted on earth as He is in heaven. In this place, our best efforts are meaningless and our best recourse is total surrender. For His thoughts are so much greater than our thoughts and His ways are so much higher than our ways, Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us, that we should rather just seek him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. It is in this posture alone that real healing and learning can take place. It takes a lot of wreckage to sometimes bring us staggering to our knees. But once there, the healing salve of God's love and forgiveness can begin to change us from the inside out, and help us to make better decisions in the future. We can begin to see the error of our ways and the righteousness of His.