Do You Enjoy Your Life?

"Dear God, thank you for making so many wonderful things for me to enjoy, and thank you for loving me most of all. Amen."Michelle Medlock Adams, How Much Does God Love You?

I love this prayer. My wife reads it to our fifteen-month-old child almost every night, yet I never quite grasped the full meaning of it until last night. God gave us life so we may enjoy it. He made everything on earth for us, because He loves us. He created an amazing world, full of things that we may enjoy. He created a universe of wonders for us, so we may wonder at His Glory and praise Him; yet we go through our every day life ignoring all these things, focusing on our problems and lack.

"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind." Ecclesiastes 2:24-26, ESV

There is so much out there for us to enjoy, let us start looking at what we have instead of what we don't. Let us start looking for, and finding, enjoyment in life, and praising Him for it.

"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24, ESV

Father, thank you for this piece of revelation. Thank you for changing our hearts and attitudes so we can start looking for those things in life that we can enjoy, and start trusting you with the other parts of life that cause us pain and fear. Thank you for how good you are. Thank you that we can trust you with our very lives. Thank you that you love us infinitely and, in your wisdom and power, you protect and guide us. Amen.

Balance in your Theology and View of God

Several extremes come to mind regarding what is being preached about God nowadays. Some people preach a "genie in a bottle" kind of God. Some people preach a God of wrath, fire, and brimstone. Others preach about a God that is nothing but love and grace, a hippie God. Even though all these teachings are technically true, emphasizing one aspect of God over the other is a misrepresentation of God, scripture, and it will yield dire consequences in our everyday lives. It will yield a twisted view of God and life.

God cannot be manipulated into doing our will no matter how much we declare and decree it. On the same note, God will not love you more or less than He already does, regardless how well we manage our sin. Actually, even if we are extremely successful at managing our sins, but we do so in our own strength, it will yield self-righteousness, which is sin in itself, so you are no better off there either.

God is in balance within Himself. God is a God of love, but He is also a God of wrath, holiness, and justice. He is our healer and provider, but He is also the commander of armies of Heaven, the Almighty Judge. He loves and forgives, but He also disciplines those He loves and condemns those He chooses to.

God does not necessarily want you to be rich, nor does He necessarily want you to be poor. He does, however, want you to have what you need in order to accomplish His will. If wealth is required, He will give it to you. If wisdom, then that is what He will give you. He will provide for you according to His wisdom and plans, but He will provide for you.

God is infinitely loving, kind, patient, and forgiving. But He is also infinitely powerful and can destroy all of creation with a single word. He is a God that can be approached with confidence and love but also in reverence, fear, and humility. We need to keep all of His attributes in mind and in a balanced way, not just those that we like the best that make us feel warm and comfortable.

Balancing Life as a Christian

We tend to swing from one extreme to another and skip the middle ground altogether. You can see this plainly in everyday life. For example, you can see this in the drastic extremes that are preached in the different churches of America and in the way some people twist their minds to give the Bible the meaning that they want it to have. This produces twisted lives. Let me clarify that I am talking about Christians here.

Every Christian should strive to live a life in balance, whether it is in actions, attitudes, words, thoughts, theology, or any other aspect of life. The bible advices us of this in several places.

 ^"Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?" Ecclesiastes 7:16-17, ESV

"Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder[c] the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or turn your foot away from evil." Proverbs 4:24-27, ESV

How to achieve this balance becomes the main concern. This balance is what Matthew 7:13-14 is talking about when it mentions the straight and narrow path. On one side of the path we will find a cheap grace that excuses the Christian's every sin and gives free reign to the flesh and not the spirit. On the other side of the path we will find self-righteousness and make ourselves modern day Pharisees filled with pride, judgment, and self-centeredness, but deep down both sides are the same. Both sides are selfish and filled with sin and death.

The answer is found in the Proverb quoted above. "Let your eyes look directly forwards, and your gaze be straight before you." Jesus is the only one that can keep us on the straight and narrow path. He is the only one that can keep us from veering to the right or left.

Father, please keep our feet on the path that leads straight to you. Let us not veer to either side, but keep our hearts humble as we look to you for guidance. Amen.