The Shore of Your Choosing

We are prone at every turn to look for something new, something hidden, something interesting to entertain us.  Somehow we think we are better for our curiosity and wiser for our breadth of gathered experiences.  Since Adam, we have an insatiable interest in the side corners of our world and do our best to get at them.  Adam, unlike Eve, was not fooled by Satan's ploy; he embraced the rebellion within it.  Hidden knowledge became a lust for him and he grabbed at it hungrily.  Before the fall, knowledge and insight came directly from God; the fall provided a new way of seeing, of searching out things.  The actualization of self became the idol of Adam and it is ours too if we are not careful.  We are not made to search things out on our own but to see everything through the eyes of God.  The only way we can do this is if we obey Him at each turn.  Faith brings us to recognize our need for God.  Obedience gives us His eyes.  I cannot know love if I am not obeying God nor do I know what to do with it if I am not letting Him be King of my actions.  Lust has been thrust upon us as love; it is the unwillingness to wait for God to show us the way through each holy desire we possess.  Once we turn from Him, we grovel in lust and make no headway whatsoever in seeing and understanding.  Romans 1 is the clear way we head when we let lust take hold of our Godly longings.  Matthew 5-7 is the way we look when we obey God in our longings and let Christ live through us.  The distance between Romans 1 and Matthew 5-7 is a great divide that can only be crossed through the cross of Jesus Christ who has made the way for us to love and hope and faith in the grind of daily living.  There is nothing fascinating or captivating in the moment a man or woman of God gives a cheek to a bad man.  It is an absurdity, a clownish act for all those who have taken the way of Romans 1.  And yet, for the one walking in Christ, doing as He directs, it is the pearl of great price, the stuff of heaven and that has a fascination for him.  You can tell who directs your boat by which shore grabs your attention.  Have you found Romans 1 your harbor or do you lean out after Matthew 5-7.  No law can turn you one way or another.  You must in the end choose who you will serve…

See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.  Romans 9: 33