Am I supposed to make you feel good, make you, or at least assist you in feeling better about yourself? Lift you up as a person of character and integrity, one who is really not all that bad, a few mistakes here and there of course, but that’s to be expected, right?
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)
You already know that, but it’s the last thing you want to be continuously reminded of, you don’t want to hear about the never-ending battle with your flesh, desires you keep from yourself, its difficult enough without someone reminding you almost constantly.
You want to hear about how much you are loved, and how that love will continue throughout all eternity, uplifting heartfelt accounts from the Scriptures about healing and forgiveness, love and compassion. Things that make you feel good, things that make you feel better about yourself.
Right?
“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (Gal. 4:16)
I am going to clue you in on a little truth here my friends, I can’t make you feel anything, no one can.
How you feel about anything, or anyone, is completely and totally up to you, if you are not in control of your emotional state, then you have a very serious problem.
There is something that has hounded my thoughts for several weeks now, and if I am repeating myself here, please forgive me. A young man traveled to several different countries and asked over one thousand people, all over the age of seventy, this question. “If you could change one thing about the life you lived, what would it be?” The answer was this. “I would not have cared so much about what other people thought of me.”
Would you like me to pen some words now that would make you feel better about yourself? How about some that might cause you to feel perhaps a little distraught with your life at the moment, or words that might even make you stop reading this letter? Can I make you do that?
Can I with simple words on paper alter your emotional state, can I make you do or think anything?
“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1st Cor. 6:19)
I call it the nose ring, similar to the ones placed in the nose of bulls to move them where you want them to go. Pull slowly and with calming words, and they will follow. Pull roughly and prepare for pain. The same can be done with almost any person, ask any polished politician, any advertising executive, or street prostitute. People can make people alter their own well-defined patterns with simple words and very little subtlety.
Ask any works-based religious organization, they know this truth better than most.
Many sit in the pews every Sunday morning because it makes them feel better about themselves, many deceive themselves in what could be called religious exercises, repetitive in nature, making them feel closer to the Lord. The proper words, the correct inflection of the voice, emotionally charged while calling upon their desires which in fact you have placed in them, unbeknownst to them. Hitler, Jim Jones, Napoleon, Nebuchadnezzar, Nimrod, all such as these were exceptionally well versed in how to make people feel a particular way.
“For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,” (2nd Tim. 3:6)
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” (Gal. 3:1)
If you are letting anyone make you feel a certain way, it’s not their fault, it’s yours.
The truth of everything written here set me free many years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ is perfecting that freedom within me further.
He has blessed you with free will, use it wisely.
