Originally delivered at Brunswick Christian Renewal Church in December ’05, & soon after at St. Simons Community Church INSIDE OUT youth ministries, & on-air at the Lighthouse 89.3 FM.
As some of you may know, a few years ago I worked in the medical field for a time. During that stint, I met a young crack addict I’ll call “P”. P’s brother had recently been murdered – very shortly before this encounter – in Savannah, and P currently had a ‘hit’ out on his head by the same gang that had taken out his brother. Turning to a friend and I for help, it was clear to us that he was indeed in some sort of trouble with the law: shady characters in suspicious looking vehicles began scope out my workplace and P only dropped by at odd hours – I usually only ran into him when working late, or when on-call. Well, eventually my friend managed to get in touch with a rehab center in Northeast Florida that was wiling to give P his life back: the offered to rehab his from his drug addiction, place him in a new community, arrange for him to get a college education, a job – in essence a future: a LIFE. The last time I saw P we were on the phone with this establishment, trying to make the final arrangements for his move to Florida, when a car honked outside the building. It was apparently one of P’s dealers: he’d left it all behind – a future and a life – for another hit.
What was his PROBLEM?! He was offered a life – a future – and turned it down to satisfy his flesh. Sadly, his problem, is my problem, is your problem, is ours: we think he had “too much desire” – that he was living for pleasure, when, in fact, his desire was too little. Every time we choose to sin, we make the same decision he did: we choose an immediate, temporally satisfying pleasure, over an eternal, entirely satisfying one. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: C.S. Lewis, Christian Hedonism, Doctrine, John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, Sam Storms, St. Augustine, Theology
Heat and Light 