Who Understands Faith?
Simon Wants to Buy Power
The Message
16-18 My
counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.
Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root
of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just
as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of
life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at
times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t
you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions
of a law-dominated existence?
19-21 It
is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way
all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation
of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for
happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness;
cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal
temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided
lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of
depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable
addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.For Reflection
Perhaps
the hardest thing to over come is our own sense of self. It is not
just who we understand our selves to be. It is also what that
understanding motivates us to do. To what extent is your sense of self cemented in your relationship with God?
Pray
that you will see who you are through God's eyes. Pray that your sense of self as a child of God protected in His universe,
will assist you to reject the pressure of living in the face of sin. Pray that sinful self-interest will never win when at odds with God's
interest in you.
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