Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Unhappiness and slavery

I have been thinking this week about how we get enslaved to the things in this world and how this results in unhappiness. When we or I seek happiness in the wrong things it really brings emptiness. Two books I have been reading stated something along this line which I have found helpful and want to think about some more.


I am reading several books and I like these thoughts--This one by Beth Moore is good:

"We fear making sacrifices. But the irony is that we make a lot of sacrifices when we are not living the will of God. How many things have we placed on the altar to Satan's kingdom? We live sacrificially when we're outside the will of God , giving up all sorts of things that were meant to be ours in Christ. We want to claim those things back, but in the process we're going to be putting a few other things on the altar."

Then this quote by Thomas Merton, a Catholic priest, from his autobiography , The Seven Storey Mountain:

I had at last become a true child of the modern world, completely tangled up in petty and useless concerns with myself, and almost incapable of even considering or understanding anything that was really important to my own true interests.......I had left Oakham and walked out into the world that I thought I was going to ransack and rob of all its pleasures and satisfactions. I had done what I intended, and now I found that it was I who was emptied and robbed and gutted. What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear.

9 comments:

  1. I would wake up in doom and gloom wondering when it was all going to crash about me. What if I lost this or that... What if this happen or that?

    I could not go on anymore and one day I gave it all back to the lord. I said you gave and you can take. When I turned that corner in my life he had me "totally". Then my heart and soul found happiness in him. Life goes on as it has too but in the meantime, I will keep looking for his soon return.

    I will have to check into those books. Thanks for posting.

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  2. Amen!
    I've always said, we are a slave to this world if we don't Seek Him and temper these desires according to His WORD.
    Thanks for posting this.
    blessings~
    Pat

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  3. the alter of Satan,s kingdom
    when you look at it that way... it really changes things.
    I don't want to hear his cheering when I add another item.
    andddd I don't want to be a , a true chid of the modern world.... yuck!

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  4. Kim, You are right, trying to keep hold of this world is a completely empty pursuit. We must hold the things of this world very lightly..because they are so transient.

    The Lord wants our whole heart. And he will do anything to make sure we love him MOST and FIRST.

    Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I rarely think about why I feel such peace when it comes to temporal things.. But your post made me remember that I once worried about things that didn't matter. Even our life span is of no importance. Every day is a gift..pre-ordained by God. When it is time to go..it's time. Why fight it?

    I wrote, in my journal/blog, "Thoughts of Home' about Dying fully..to ourselves..and living wholly for the Lord..because the Lord has been showing me why he lets things go 'wrong'. It's to save me from getting too attached to the joys of this life.

    I love Beth Moore and Thomas Merton. They have so much to offer. :o)

    Donna @ Comin' Home

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  5. Amen! Good words. And yet there is something in us which would embrace a living death. Rather than in Jesus by faith growing more and more into a dying life.

    I want to read Merton. Hopefully will do so sometime. I do have a couple of his books.

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  6. Good thoughts Kim. We can make "good" decisions and miss the "best in life," by going our own way. Better to rely on Him and to trust. I never, in my wildest of dreams, thought I would be a missionary in eastern Europe. And He has given me the dreams of my heart.

    Coleen in Ukraine
    www.franksukraine.blogspot.com
    www.vintageterrace2.blogspot.com

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  7. Great thoughts, Kim. I attempt to hold everything very loosely, so that if at any time something gets broken or soiled, it does not bother me in the least. Or if the Lord should prompt me to give something away, away it goes to hopefully bring joy to someone else. As much as I love beautiful things, I must love God, the will of God and the people of God more.
    Hugs, Cindy

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  8. Just popping over to say HI!
    Hope all is well with you and your family.

    God bless you today~
    Pat

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  9. Ohhh Mrs.Kim How happy I am to just have stopped by and be able to take in a message that I so needed right now.My soul was in a place because of "things" Reading this helped me to put some of these things into perspective. All the time he is good!

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