After a fallow period when I've been too pre-occupied with writing a dissertation, I thought I'd return to the occasional series about choices I have made. Every choice listed so far, over the last year or so of blogs, has been a positive, good choice. I want to mention now some choices that I made that have caused difficulty, struggle, and pain in my Christian journey.
Here are the first three:
1.Seeking favour of
man rather than God- For many years as a believer I wanted to be accepted and seen as being worthy, and as a result was often seeking re-assurance, status, affirmation from people around me-especially authority figures. It has taken years for me to learn that the true place of acceptance, favour and value is in the arms of a loving Heavenly Father. Reaching the place of seeking to be a God-pleaser rather than a people-pleaser has been a long journey.
Acts
5:29 But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than
human authority.
2.Succumbing to
fleshly desires –I have been a living embodiment of the phrase 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak! I have been fighting a long battle in an attempt to ensure that I don't become dominated by fleshly desires for food,
sleep, pleasure, for example. Someone once said that you have to master yourself before your self masters you.
Gal.
5:19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will
produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for
lustful pleasure,
3.Not protecting my
soul from emotional and physical ties- as a teenager and a student I entered into a series of relationships with girls that seemed exciting and appropriate at the time, but actually damaged me and damaged them. I've discovered that if you give your heart to someone outside of a Godly relationship that you then can't give the 'all' to Jesus that he requires. If half of your heart is elsewhere, then no wonder you are half-hearted about your faith!
Prov.
4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do