From the time we are born, we are told in a million verbal and nonverbal ways that our purpose in life is to make our own life easier!
Everything we are told to aspire to be, to do and achieve, is to become more secure and comfortable, until we’re secure and comfortable enough to actually be able to retire into a type of private, utopian end-of-life final full focus on comfort with little or no work at all state of being, to both culminate and demonstrate to others a life of success.
 
We get an education to get a job to get money to buy things to make other people or machines do our work for us, in service to us! This has made us into something less than human!
 
Jesus said that he came to serve not to be served and that we were to do the same. Remember that washing the feet episode?
We were never meant to be like that – focused on pleasing ourselves, with a life-goal of comfort and laziness!
 
After wrecking life in the garden that was given to us to enjoy through disobedience to God, we were charged to go out into the field to make IT a garden, which we would not be able to do without putting sweat on our brow!
 
To make sweat on our forehead a dirty thing is blasphemy!
 
It’s a way of giving God the middle finger with respect to His command to work hard to make something beautiful out of something ugly; to put order where there’s chaos; to put hope where there’s despair; to give purpose to displace a life full of emptiness of meaning and confusion.
 
The great lie that the “spirit of this world” [ AKA Satan, the “prince of this world” ] strives to imprint in everyone is that our purpose in life is to serve the “flesh,” to give it as much comfort as possible, and to do everything we can to ensure it does not suffer discomfort and pain.
 
This philosophy, which is so dominant in our modern culture, has produced a lot of selfish cowards, including among our leaders, people who are usually living divided lives inside, depressed and angry at the lack of true meaning and purpose in life!
 
If you want to be a true follower of Jesus, then stop spending your money on your comfort, and start working for the good of others; start building a kingdom, not a fortress.
 
To make “comfort” the goal of all our effort is to blaspheme God – to commit adultery in the heart by giving it to the world when it belongs to God; it is to remain trapped in the insecurity of sin to make the world your friend rather than Jesus, who is Himself no friend of this world, run by the prince of evil.
Jesus’ involvement was solely to save us from it, the world, so that we would be able to enjoy happiness eternally with God in heaven.
 
It blows me away to see so many Christians that I know personally – people who seem to be sincerely trying to follow Jesus – who are yet somehow convinced that their total embeddedness in insecurity and materialism is ethically and spiritually innocent, especially when I hear them talking excitedly about recent purchases they made that make their life easier, more comfortable and more entertaining, I.e., pools, jacuzzis, sports-vehicles, pleasure-boats, pleasure cruises, trips to the Resorts, etc.
 
None of these things are evil or bad in themselves of course, but the prominence that they can have as a priority interest in so many lives in our culture today is indicative of a pagan culture, the danger of allowing an attitude and intention to root itself habitually in the heart regarding where a person feels they want to give their attention (and, subsequently, their “desire,”) in a dedicated and continuous way in their daily life and “desire” is just another way of saying their “heart”.
 
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” [Roman’s 8:7-9]
 
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” [James 4:4].
 
We are to be in the world but not “of it” right?
 
How can we not be “of it” when we stuff ourselves full of it?
 
FROM TODAY’S SECOND READING:
 
“If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.
We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;
death no longer has power over him.
As to his death, he died to sin once and for all;
as to his life, he lives for God.
Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as dead to sin
and living for God in Christ. Jesus.” Romans 6:8-11