| Daily
Thought – April 22, 2004 |
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| LIVING THE SOLUTION WITH DAILY INSPIRATION |
My counsel
is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's
Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness.
For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that
is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit
is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of
life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times
one way and at times another way according to how you
feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led
by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions
of a law-dominated existence? It is obvious what kind
of life develops out of trying to get your own way
all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking
accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied
and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show
religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition;
all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper;
an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and
divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits;
the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into
a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions;
ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't
the first time I have warned you, you know. If you
use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's
kingdom.
(Galatians 5:16-21, the Message)
Live freely, animated and motivated
by God's Spirit. Wow, what does that look like? It certainly
does not look like what most of us do in how we live
our lives; the motivations that drive us. Just the sound
of it is freeing and strikes something in our being;
a longing for something that we keep striving for but
can never attain through our own efforts.
You may look at these verses and think, “But I
try to live right, I don’t live like a person
who does not go to church, who doesn’t ‘know’ God.” But
Paul is not writing this to non-believers; he is writing
to believers. His point is the natural result of living
our lives from any other motivation other than love
and passions from our heart toward God is bound to bring
us a life of frustration and disappointment.
We were not created to live for self - to live life
based on what “I” will get out of it. Nor
were we created to live life “safe”. We
were created to live life from our heart, from love,
first for God, then for those around us. We will only
find the happiness, joy, and peace we so long for when
we live the way we were created: living from our hearts,
taking risks (faith) and living an adventure with God.
Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit.
Live it with Passion
Pete Reinbold
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Scripture
taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.Copyright
© 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All
rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission
of International Bible Society.
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered
trademarks of International Bible Society. Use of either
trademark for the offering of goods or services requires
the prior written consent of International Bible Society.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy
Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996. Used
by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton,
IL 60189, USA. All rights reserved. |
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