Cairo: Jesus in Egypt & God's Unusual Leaning
God seldom gives us all we need to understand, but He always gives us what we need in order to obey. The story of Jesus in Egypt as a boy offers a...
If you think about it, King Solomon never started out to build pagan shrines. It was his failure to deal with the tiny spiritual cracks in his heart that produced a life of compromise and dissatisfaction.
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The backwash from Solomon’s life reminds us how we only kid ourselves when we think we can have a healthy walk with God and still keep our hidden life of compromise on the side.
The good news? We don’t have to.
Many people walk this road of compromise. We love God, but honestly, we also love our secret sins. And yet, how utterly unsatisfying both lives become when we try to live in both worlds!
No one can live without delight, and that is why a man deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures. —Thomas Aquinas
Both the spiritual life and our secret life are miserable. That’s because God never created us to live that way. God wants more for us than the incessant cycle of confession and failure. He wants us to live beyond the futility the world seeks.
I believe it is possible.
How can we begin to fill the cracks of a divided heart?
We can have the wisdom of Solomon and still have cracks in our hearts.
Solomon took a lifetime to discover this simple truth (Ecclesiastes 11:9; 12:13).
God has called us to exchange the fleeting pleasure of little sins for something far better and more satisfying—Himself.
Tell me what you think: What has helped you realize that trying to live in two worlds doesn’t give us the satisfaction we long for? To leave a comment, just click here.
Adapted from Wayne Stiles, “Unwise Cracks,” Insights (September 2005): 1-2. Copyright © 2005, Insight for Living. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.
Learn the top 6 Lessons from Visiting the Holy Land more than 20 times in 21 years with Dr. Wayne Stiles, a longtime devotional scholar who is passionate about sharing the practical application of bringing God's Word to life.
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