Spiritual Direction: If We Live For God We Will Live Forever

Temptations seem to be everywhere these days. Luxurious food commercials on TV, lusty billboards, R-rated movies, dirty jokes, etc. Those are the traditional sins, the ones that are easy to see and although they are hard to stop most people can do so. 

The ones we are going to look at today are much more sly or not as obvious at first and many people may not think there is anything wrong with them at all until they have become dependent upon them and at that point it is too late. 

At a press conference on August 12th, 1986, US President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Did President Reagan understand what many today do not, the government is God and it should not be worshiped.  As many of the people in the late 20th century and early 21st century started putting their trust into the government, how has that worked out for you?

The Pew Research Group has surveyed Public Trust in the Government since 1958.  In Sept. of 2021, they came out with the latest report. When their National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Trust in government began eroding during the 1960s, amid the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the decline continued in the 1970s with the Watergate scandal and worsening economic struggles. Confidence in government recovered in the mid-1980s before falling again in the mid-1990s. But as the economy grew in the late 1990s so too did confidence in the government. Public trust reached a three-decade high shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but declined quickly thereafter. Since 2007, the share saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30%. In Sept. 2021 it was about ¼ of the percentage of people who said they believed in 1958.  To demonstrate this more dramatically the population in 1958 was about one half the population of today and in that year, there were more people (number) that believed what the government said than there are (number of people today when we have almost 334 million people. 

The challenge for us all is to overcome these things and to stand up for morality and chastity.  So how do we do this?  Through sheer will power?  Or is there a better way?

Brothers and sisters, stop believing the powers of man and start believing in the powers of God.  Man did not create God, God created man and woman. 

Look at these two Scripture passages: 

Matthew 26  39-41

39 He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” 

40 When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?

41 Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test.* The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Jeremiah 17: 5-10

This is what the LORD says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from

mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the LORD. That

person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see

prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of

the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is

in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots

by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are

always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails

to bear fruit.”

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can

understand it? I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind,

to reward each person according to their conduct, according to

what their deeds deserve.”

Praise be to God always!

We should judge a government by the deeds of that government not by their promises.  We should judge them by their actions, not their words and we should judge them because in the eyes of God- all must be believed and when a government is overthrown and replaced we should make sure that it was done for righteous reasons.  One government should not invade another under the pretense of upholding something or offering to liberate the conquered country simply because it pleases them to do something.  We are here to live for God, we are here to worry about the Kingdom of Heaven and how we can get back to there.  

If we fall into the trap of living for man we will live each year like a   salmon swimming upstream.  We do not realize our fate.  We reach our end; it is our own destruction.  If we live for God we will live forever.