No escape - Part One

This week, Michael writes: Wherever you go, there you are. You can't escape from yourself. The apostle Paul said, "In my flesh dwelleth no good thing." As Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry said after a naval battle in the war of 1812, "We have met the enemy and he is us." If you think of yourself you'll be depressed, if you think of the circumstances, you'll be stressed, but if you think of the Lord, you'll be blessed.  

Without a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, peoplen can't escape the insidious preoccupation with self. The basis of the sin nature is pride. The devil beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden when he appealed to her pride. He said to her, "God's not God, you are.  If you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you'll be like God." You won't need God. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they lost their innocence. Their eyes were opened to the nature of sin, guilt, shame and death. God had said, "on the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die." They died spiritually that day ... disobedience separated them from God. We inherited Adam's sin nature, his DNA, and the genetic "man code"...  without God and without hope.  The sin nature makes men and women fearful, lonely, inadequate, and insecure.  

According to Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” Verse 15says, “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one (Adam) many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.”

Most people get disappointed in themselves.  As Paul said, "the things that I don't want to do I do, and the things that I want to do I don't do. O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this dead body." The self-absorbed person says, "I may not be much, but I'm all I think about." Egotism is excessive preoccupation with self.  The world's human code says"I'm capable of meeting  my own needs." Self-confidence is confidence in my own abilities. The world repeats the devil's original lie:  You don't need God...you can do it all by yourself.

However, Jeremiah 17:9-10says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  I the LORD search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”  

Philippians 3says, "do nothing through selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind consider others more important than yourself.  Do not merely look out for your own personal interest but look out for the interest of others.  Have this attitude which was also in Christ."

Let's continue Michael message "No Escape" on the next post.
In Christ, Brian