ChosenRebel's Blog

Saturday is for Reflection

How do our lives get cluttered

and distracted,
and out of whack,
disjointed,
misdirected, 
unpurposed,
uninspiring,
unfocused,
unfulfilling,
unsatisfying,
and joyless?

How do we head off with great passion to love and serve God and lose our way when the path is so clearly marked? Jesus could not have been clearer:

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  (Matthew 6:33, [NASB95])

John Piper has some insight for us.

“Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, ‘as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life’ (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, ‘The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful’ (Mark 4:19). ‘The pleasures of this life’ and ‘the desires for other things’—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating, and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.”   

—John Piper, A Hunger for God, p. 15.

The last sentence is vitally important.

“And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.”

Don’t let anything, no matter how good or innocent in itself, clutter your vision and fill your heart. Don’t let anything become a substitute for the Living God in your life.