One step to fast-tracking ruining your life …

One of my favorite dispensers of wisdom, “Source Unknown,” has written this wise insight: “No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.”

As I write this in my office (Starbucks), there’s a living example sitting at a table just outside by the window. He’s a fellow I met about a year or so before the pandemic when he relocated from the ritzier part of the Los Angeles area to San Diego.

The fellow is a living, breathing contradiction.

How so?

This fellow accumulated wealth by building a “mini empire” of 38 fitness centers, along with other fitness-related business endeavors, and has indulged in the soft life that comes from material wealth.

A result of his indulgence is he’s morbidly obese and now that gross lack of personal fitness is increasingly resulting in serious health issues that, at his late age, are slowly killing him.

The contradiction? Indulging the freedom of wealth from the fitness industry while being so personally unfit it’s robbing him of quality of life, and will eventually (sooner rather than later) rob him of life itself.

There are many people just like this fellow.

That’s why both of the two best known apostles, Peter and Paul, took up their pens about this issue, as they were led by the Holy Spirit.

Peter wrote,“For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil,” 1 Peter 2:16.

Paul’s words are similar, but a bit more “fleshed out” for us: “For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love,” Galatians 5:13.

Those are necessary warnings for us because when we experience freedom, the pull of our flesh is to use it for an opportunity to indulge our selfish desires. Doing so leads to an ugly outcome, much like the story once told by the late Paul Harvey about how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin when given freedom:

First the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.

Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly new, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the Arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor sharp sting of the naked blade on his tongue nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his own warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more – until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!

Jesus Himself waded into the fray of warning us about using our freedom to indulge our selfish desires. One profound warning from Jesus was recorded by Luke:

“Then he told them a story: ‘A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. He said to himself, “What should I do? I don’t have room for all my crops.” Then he said, “I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods. And I’ll sit back and say to myself, ‘My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!'” But God said to him, “You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?” Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God,'” Luke 12:16-21.

The fast-track to ruining your life is to use your freedom in Christ to indulge desires of the flesh rather than fostering and nurturing a rich relationship with God, and serving others in love.

What are you doing with your God-given freedom?

Scotty