How quickly our cravings turn on us though! What we once thought we had mastered, now becomes our master. Food, once a comforting late night friend, now becomes our only comforter. Movies, once a provocative entertainer, now twist our thoughts into torturous dissatisfaction. Knowledge, once a helpful tool, now pushes us into careers full of discontent. Sex, once a joyful experience, now becomes a lust that is never fully satisfied. What happened? We were just out there enjoying our lives, when all of a sudden everything we enjoyed turned into a cruel, demanding slave driver. We find ourselves shackled to the things we once only occasionally tinkered with. They were like pets in our home, who suddenly were able to speak, overpowered us, put us in collars, and chained us on a leash. We can't seem to survive without our masters.
Most of us never want to admit how enslaved we really are to our cravings. It is embarrassing! If people only knew! I want you to try something right now. Close your eyes and imagine all the masters in your life. Who dictates what you do and why you do it? Not who do you want to dictate, but who IS dictating. Is it your career, your spouse, your children, your Doritos, religion, pornography, friends, yourself? Now, ask this, "am I satisfied in these masters?" If you answered "no", then there is hope. If you answered "yes", then know that all these masters will let you down some day.
You see our desire for an all satisfying answer to our craving for peace of mind is not some cosmic joke. There really is a cure for our cravings. But there is only ONE cure for those cravings. We are not the answer. Food, entertainment, knowledge, relationships, and sex do not exist to serve our purposes. They exist because they were CREATED, just as we were CREATED! All of creation was not created to serve us, but to serve the purposes of the creator. They exist for God, just as we exist for God. What will inevitably happen when we try to make created things serve us? Those created things will become our masters, our gods. But they are unable to satisfy, because they were not created for themselves either. Who will free us from this death spiral that chokes the very life and light out of us? It is for this very reason that Jesus came!
We are on this quest for peace of mind because we do not know the one who made us. Only He can put us at ease. So in our life absent from God, we search for something to take His place, rebelling against His love. A deadly spiral of lust giving birth to sin which gives birth to death becomes our daily reality. The death spiral must be removed before we will see God. Jesus' death on the cross was to break the curse of sin and death that we might be free from our chains. Through faith (belief and trust) in the finished death and resurrection of Jesus, we are free to love the way we were created to love. Have you ever noticed how all these false masters lead to broken relationships in our lives as well? It is because we are not free to love. But in Christ Jesus we are FREED TO LOVE!!! We can have that ever escaping peace of mind, we can love God freely, and we can love others without restraint. Paul's words in Galatians 5:1 and 5:13-14 make our souls soar with satisfaction in the completed work of Jesus
Galatians 5:1 ~ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:13-14 ~ For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
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