Relationships - The Foolish Heart

The foolish heart

In my own life since I have been my own son’s age I have been taught things from my parents. My Mom taught me things that would help guide me, things that would keep me safe, and things that would protect me. I have realized now, looking back, that growing up as a child most everything that I have learned I learned out of desire. When I was hungry I desired food so had to learn to eat, when I was thirsty I desired to drink so I had to learn how to hold a cup. When I wanted to speak I had to learn to talk, when I needed to go somewhere I had to learn how to walk. As a child my learning came from my desires. It’s different now though. Now that I am grown I find that my desires change with my responsibilities and no longer am I controlled by my desires, and my personal needs, as much as I am controlled by necessities of life. Sure I work for money, but I also work to pay bills, to pay for gas, to save for a house, to buy food etc…

All of us in this room as we grow into this next phase of our lives are beginning to move from a childlike mindset into one of adult. In this mindset, we shouldn’t be driven by desires or our cravings, because these , although they are childlike and immature, aren’t the same cravings because our eyes are open. Everyone in this room somehow and someway have eaten from the apple and we have traded our innocence, out of our own desires, our own passions, for something and have been left with the guilt or shame of our actions and our desires. We have taken things that were meant for good, stuff that was intended in our lives to be innocent, to be pure, to be holy, that which was meant as a gift, that which was meant to be a preservative in our lives and turned them into shameful, lustful, selfish desires.

It is out of our lusts we find that somewhere in our minds we can justify our actions, which come from our cravings and desires, not by what our inherent conscious or Holy Spirit is saying to us, but by the actions of people around us. We like a child say, “well my friends are getting away with such and such so it’s ok.”

Let me give an example: Cohabitation Statistical Facts!

Greater rates of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and dysfunctional relationship behavior (domestic abuse, unfaithfulness, high amounts of conflict) exist in cohabiting relationships.
Couples living together before marriage have a greater rate of divorce than those who did not live together.
Over one-third of all cohabiting relationships involve children. These children are at greater risk to be physically and/or sexually abused, and they are more likely to repeat the high risk relationship behaviors of their parent(s).
Children of cohabitated parents often themselves will end up divorced starting a process that will repeat to their children

Research has shown that both divorce and unmarried childbearing decrease the economic well being of both children and mothers.

Only 9% of children under six in two-parent households are poor, while 47% of those living in single-mother households live in poverty.
More specifically, 45% of children raised by divorced mothers and 69% raised by never-married mothers live in or near poverty.
One analysis found that nearly 80% of child poverty occurs in broken or never-formed families, and it concludes that more marriages could reduce poverty by as much as twenty-five percent.

Cohabiting relationships are far less stable than marriages. Cohabiters experience less emotional and financial success and higher rates of domestic violence. As noted before, marriages following cohabitation are more likely to end in divorce than those not preceded by cohabitation. Over one-third of cohabiting relationships involve kids, and children living with cohabiting couples have more behavior problems and lower academic performance than children in married-couple families. Even though marriage offers benefits that cohabitation does not, two-thirds of American teens (67%) believe that it is better to live with someone prior to marriage to determine compatibility. The majority of teens (59%) also expect to cohabit themselves. This is determined to be the outcome of what they have seen in their parents and not rationally understanding correctly what it is to have a healthy relationship, and marriage.

Certain relationship behaviors of some young people typically do not lead to lifelong commitment.

Currently, 40% of young women have "hooked up" (engaged in a physical encounter with a male with no commitment attached).
The earlier and more frequently woman who engage in sexual activities, the more prone they are to acquire an STD, get pregnant, get raped or abused, and use drugs and alcohol. They are also less likely to marry and more prone to future infidelity and divorce.
The higher the frequency of relationship break-ups, the greater chances of susceptibility to divorce in the future.
60% of those who have sexual relationships before marriage will cheat on their husband and wife because they have no real understanding of commitment, but rather have only an understanding of passion

Despite statistics such as these there are people in this audience that live like wild children, driven out of their passions, driven by their lusts, driven by their desire to do what is pleasing, rather then the right things and will end up another statistic. My focus here is not on just relationships; I could pull out the statistics on drugs and go through them; however it is to show you the affects of sin and their consequences.

Has anyone ever heard of Antony Flew? He was a world renown professor at Cambridge as well as an Atheist and humanist. Atheist’s don’t really have an organization but if they did this man would be what you call a well known face of the organization. Most atheists are driven by their passion for knowledge. However, in that passion for knowledge they throw away their belief in the tricotomy of man and begin to go where the supposed evidence takes them often relying on dogmatism and reason to get there.

I find atheist, agnostics, and evolutionists funny and here is why. They will accept any evidence that supports their theory at face value and scream their truth from the roof tops, however, when evidence is given to the contrary they will not accept it. Well, Atheism leading advocate has know took a look at the evidence and has realized that evolution is a joke. This man is know a bible believing Christian because he has seen the fingerprint of God through science (they now have evidence of biological machines found in bacteria that could neither be mutated or have evolved, they had a unique design in themselves and if they have a design he a summized they have to have a designer). Now how does this tie together.

Man in his lust, his desire for knowledge had reasoned God out of the equation and because of it. These professors have taught kids for generation a falsity. In this falsity generations of kids have graduated college and have denied there is God. These kids will grow up and die and go straight to hell because they have traded the evident existence of God in creation for their own fallen reason.

Let me assure you while the intellectually smug person thinks themselves to be different from the woman and man who sleep around or desires to live together. While they reason in themselves to be better then the drug addict, or the thief, I assure you that biblically that there fate is equally as warm.

Make no mistake whether your desires take you from one bed to the next, one bar to the next or one theory to the next if you have not allowed God to shape what is to be the fruit of his image in your life than your fate will be equally in your hands.

This fate is even worse for those who think they know but are merely religious. Religious people are people that have bought in to a school of thought often times thinking they are correct because they “do the right things.” If you “do” 99.9% of everything right, your still not a 100% obedient. Obedience to God is what it means to be a true Christian. This means to be 100% obedient to the will of God in your life. In ministry you can always tell when trouble is coming when supposed Christians draw lines in the sand about what rules they will and won’t follow.

They say I’m going to drink because, I’m going to listen to this music because, I’m going to watch this show because, I’m going to the club because, I’m going to the bar because. But your thoughts are child like because you reason by your desires. Foolish Christians think if they do or don’t do something they’ll have some sort of “in” with God. But your asking the wrong question. Have you answered the question, “What is your call.” Most of you haven’t. Yet you consistently put the cart before the horse and are driven by your wants rather then allowing the living God you proclaim so much shape those desires. It’s time to stop thinking like little children and grow up in the Lord. The bible states:

Matthew 7:21

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven

All you religious people who know so much, if you know so much, and have all the right answers then why can’t you answer the question of your call. According to the bible, knowing the will of God seems to be an important thing. However, no one wants to talk about the consequences of what they don’t know, but rather the exceptions of what they think they do.

Let me be clear. You who are so full of knowledge, who bought into a school of thought rather then seeking after truth. The more knowledge you obtain only makes you more responsible when you stand before God. Make no mistake you will be held to a higher standard. If your knowledge doesn’t lead you to your calling then ask yourself what you really know. To know God is to his call. For you I see these words. Grace is a slingshot and not a net. Turn your heart to God.

As a black belt in karate I would always get a chuckle out of the greenbelts in the class and here is why. The green belt has only been karate for about a year, but as soon as a white belt walked in there class they would run over to them and share all their knowledge about karaete to them. They would correct their form, adjust their technique, and just act like they knew everything.

As a black belt I would sit back and laugh thinking how smug that really is. Since in my own knowledge I know that even with all this training I am only know ready to begin learning.

However, in this room tonight some of you have all the knowledge in the world when it comes to Jesus. Your ready to share your opinion, give advice, you have a biblical lust to absolutely share your testimony because God “has taken you out of so much.” Yet like a women who sleeps around, a drunkard who desires a drink, or a professor who has reasoned there is no God, you have no idea what your doing or saying and have no business saying to the world, “Hey I am a Christian you should be like me.”

Check this scripture out:

Psalm 14:1-4

1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. 3 All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.4 Will evildoers never learn—

You may ask yourself, “What does this scripture have to do with me? This scripture is for the atheist, it’s for the agnostic, what does have to do with me.” But let’s truly understand this scripture?

Lets break it down:

The fool say in his heart there is no God: Definition

They are corrupt
Their deeds are vile
There is no who does good (they think they are good)
They never learn

So who is the one who says in their heart there is no God? It is he who is immoral, who is dishonest, those who exploit others, those who seek personal gain, those who call what is disgusting, what is appalling, what is degrading, what is shameful good. Those who say in their heart, I am a good person. Those who make the same mistake over, and over, and over again expecting a different outcome.

Paul and John state this scripture this way:

Galatians 5:19
19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Rev 21:8

8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

I want to tell you something about these two lists: these are not rules for the sake of rules they are Gods wisdom imparted unto us to keep us under his protection. So the idea is not just to not be sexually immoral, or a liar, or, not to practice the occult, or to be filled with hatred or jealousy. The idea is to understand what God wants for you rather, than all the things that you see him telling you not to do. Let me tell you a truth and you can take it to the bank. The sign of a depraved state of mind, is a person who is so full of sin that he has reasoned in his own mind that God is just the God of rules and regulations in order to keep a society under control or the idiot who says, “God doesn’t want me to have fun.” If this is your thinking, you need to fear God and understand the cross.

The reason why you who sleep around will end up in hell is not because God has some deep dark fascination to send people to Hell. It is because God who created you in his very image has entrusted over us something called love. And in the purity and wholeness, and wellness of love is found the very character of God. So that which he entrusted unto all of us in this room we defile. We have defiled our bodies, which are the image of God, and we defile the purity of love which is the very character of God. When we do things like this we say in our hearts, “There is no God.”

Understand that all sin violates the very Character of God and that all sin is against God first and foremost. Your sin comes from the depravity of your wants and misunderstanding of who God is. If your heart is after God then you would fear him understanding that his power, his supremacy, his Godness can’t be fully known, or fully put into words. To say he is awesome is almost like building an idol and calling it YAHWEH, to say that he amazing is truly understating the fact. The fact that he is indescribable, that he is in unthinkable, unchangeable, all powerful, and incomparable should not only cause you to bow your life before him humbly, it should create a fear in you to desire his revelation and that first and foremost. God is good and is loving and in his intent for creation has a purpose just for you. Understand that in the character of God is found the essence of him being a creator and he is not in need of anything from us as if we can please him by what we do. We can only please him by aligning ourselves within in his will and saying Lord I will do as you will. His pleasure comes from our surrender and obedience. Some of you in this room have everything figured out, some will be a statistic, some in this room are completely lost, some of you are foolish to believe that your happiness hinges on another person, some of you maybe for the first time are realizing that your actions say to the world, “There is no God!” There a saying in church which I have come to despise it goes like this, “There is room at the cross for you.” I wish this was true, but the real truth is while there may be room, the cross comes with a price.

Understand that God emptied out his form of Godness and took the form of a man in Jesus Christ. The creator became the created. In that he took to the cross the sins, like the ones we have talked about earlier, to that cross and bore the punishment for us. You see your sin put him on the tree, your sin cried out and said crucify him, your sin took nails and drove them into his hands and feet, your sin pierced his side, your sin put a thorn of crowns on his head and pierced his brow, and your sin caused the crucifixion of the Son of God. Mankind has tarnished the image of God entrusted to us with sin so much, that before God could come to live with us he had to make atonement for our sin. But Jesus was happy to take that punishment, he was happy to have his beard pulled out, and his backed ripped shreds, because his Glory was found in his obedience to his Father’s will which was to endure the cross for your sake. He died for you and this he did so you may have life more abundantly!

So the question remains. Is there still room at the cross for you? Here is the answer. Are you willing to pay the same price that Jesus did? Can you give it all? Can you put your absolute trust in him today? What does it mean? It means instead of sleeping around I will pursue God who is love and find out what real love is no matter how long it takes. It means giving up friends that are no good, it means giving up a boyfriend because you have put him before God. It means getting rid of a girlfriend because you think you can’t live without her. You see people, the cost of Christ is all, it is everything, its your entirety.

It will cost your love, your life, your heart, your mind and trusting in him for purpose. This is the cost and the price he paid for you. He expects nothing less of his people. So the cross is for everyone, everyone who will surrender completely to his life. What will you choose today? Will you choose the depravity of your own knowledge, your own desires, your own wants like a child or will your grow up and understand what the gospel really is.

Will you die in your sin and face an eternity in hell, or will you die living for him and spend eternity with God? Understand that you don’t know in your depravity a good choice! It is only by God you can know his will and make the right choices. So ask yourself, what a fool says in his heart!

Now ask yourself what your heart is saying to you!