Running On Insanity

Good afternoon fellow readers,

I am back in my hometown and today was the first Sunday I had been to a new church since being back for the summer. But boy oh man was today's sermon something that not only did I need to hear, but I think any Christian needs to hear.

2 Peter 2:17-22

These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[a] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

The sermon started off with the pastor talking about how balancing your money isn't easy and back then there used to not be a software that would do it for you. Today due to technological advances we have that software. Today, it makes it easier for you and takes away the worries of miscalculating where your money went and then having to go find it. But then the question was raised, "Wouldn't it be easy if there was a software for life. One that would help balance everything so we could be happy and worry-free?" 

But unfortunately there isn't one ready for that, so we are stuck trying to live in a chaotic unbalanced world. Life is hard! The struggles of having a family, a stressful job, a marriage that has its ups and downs, making friends, having time for everything; there is a lot that can make life difficult. We try to do our best at everything and while trying to live happy and be good a Christian... and at some point along the way we fail so we try harder and fail again... It is like a constant circle. We try harder but the wrong way until we eventually reach a point of defeat and want to give up. We start to turn to old habits and fall into temptations and struggles because it is easier to let go than fight. We get tired of things not going our way. We start to wonder why work so hard if we are going to fail. We become enslaved to many sins and darkness. As we fall farther into these habits we try to convince ourselves that we are going to try to do better and stop... The only problem is that we find it hard to take that step to actually do it. 

When life gets hard and we don't get what we want or things don't fall into place with our plans, we tend to use sin as medication to fix our problems. It's pure insanity! You think you can stop and fix things and resume life, but eventually down the road you will fail again and be right back at the same spot. It is like running on a treadmill. If you think you can stop sinning and it will fix everything and life will get better, then think again. You will never get off the treadmill that was never going anywhere.

You can never walk away from sin, but you can walk to Jesus. He is the only way to deal with life and struggles. He is the only way to help you through the daily ups and downs. Choose Him over choosing to be enslaved to sin and darkness. Choose Him and He will lead you the right way. Life may not get better immediately but know that you will be trusting Him and not yourself. You will not be leading yourself down a destructive path. Sin never leads you anywhere good.

Once you take that step with Jesus, you step off the treadmill that was never going anywhere. Jesus will take you farther and deeper than you could ever go alone. Choose Christ because with Him, everything is possible and we won't see the need to fall into old habits and use sin as an excuse to fix our messed up lives.

Choose Christ!