Fake Beef

I've been gone for a while, due to various reasons, and I've had some time to realize some things about myself:

1. I am the living embodiment of the lyric, "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it; prone to leave the God I love."

2. I am never more than a few steps away from the person I'd never thought I'd be.

3. I don't understand God's grace, love, and righteousness.

4. When it comes down to it, I don't live in a way that shows I truly believe the promises of Christ.

5. Finally, I've been slapped with the reality that I've been wallowing in a cheap substitute for real life.

To put it simply, these realizations have come somewhat in order. That is to say that each thought led to the other. This all reminds me of a song named "Upgrade" by a band called Remedy Drive. Now, I know this isn't an RMP, but I figure since I haven't posted one in a while, no one will be upset. The lyrics go like this:

We're still sowing in the finite fields  

We're so content to live under a curse

We're still fabricating paradise

With the thorns, with the flies and dirt

Hold out for the upgrade man

Let go of your sinking sands

This bent world's not the promised land

This feeble frame's not meant to stand

I say all this because I've recently seen myself succumb to sin that I had thought for a long time was only a marginal issue. But I believe the reason I've been through this stuff, (apart from my sinful nature) has been God allowing me to see that worldly pleasures just don't cut it and don't give me what I need.

In short, I'm tired of the the world's replacement for satisfaction. Because from what I've seen, it is a second-rate, China-made, off-brand, high-calorie, low-nutrient, fake-beef decoy. And what do decoys do? They distract us from what we're really supposed to be looking at.

Ephesians 2 would say it like this:

"All of us also lived among them [the world] at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions —it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

Cravings of our flesh? End in death. Riches of His grace? Incomparably sufficient. And it is not just sufficient, but the next chapter goes on to say that God is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us."

Why are we letting this gold mine fly by us?! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the stupidity that I found I've been buying into for much too long. And I'm done with it. I'm ready to move on to those things that are better than what I could ever ask for.

Lately, I've been learning a lot about the fact that God made us to experience Him. Now, in our sinful nature, we run off to other things to try to "experience" something powerful. That's why people go to drugs, sex, and wild living. The truth is that the desire to experience something satisfying isn't wrong, but we're just digging in the wrong fields, as Remedy Drive would put it.

So when we talk to unbelievers about how God is better than what they've got, do we really experience God in a way that this is true? Well, I'm determined to do so.

And I invite you to join me.

Posted in: