Waking thoughts after a dream:
“Many step into sin because they can!”
We are all set in such a way that we move, go, do, choose what we will do based on our own personal bent toward what we could call our “selfish will” rather than on what is right or wrong. At some level we may have a kind of code, a system of values we live by. Much of that is bases on our learned experience. For better or worse. But there are times where we do not acknowledge out choices are birthed from temptation and we don’t do this or that based on the word of God, moral code, or value but rather because of will, specifically out of how our will is bent. So instead of sin being an accidental thing as we foolishly think it is sometimes. We actually choose sin willfully because we can just like Adam and Eve in the garden.
I wonder if she was curious about that tree of good and evil. So, she went by it and when the enemy came along with temptation, deceiving her, she believed it was right for her to take it, breaking and bending all of humanity with her choice. Willful disobedience!
What do you think?
Book I am reading:
The book is called, “How to Think: A survival guide for a world at odds” by Alan Jacobs. I picked it up after someone I listen to in a podcast referenced it. It’s pretty good. I am almost done with it. I thought I would share a few favorites from it.
This is what thinking is (not the decision itself) but what goes into the decision, the consideration, the assessment. It’s testing your own responses and weighing the available evidence; it’s grasping, as best you can and with all available and relevant senses, what is, and it’s also speculating, as carefully and responsibly as you can, about what might be. And it’s knowing when not to go it alone, and whom you should ask for help.
Thinking isn’t just all the garble that goes on in your head in a day. Thinking is the way you test, inspect, and taking in information, integrating it, and share it with others. It’s far more than simple observance of chatter in your mind.
The author mentions things that hinder thinking. Often that is anything we don’t already know but more likely it changes or new information to what we do already know. If we think we know, we tend to resist more data. Years ago, when I was working as the youth pastor at my church. I would talk to the kids about 5 seconds of grace. It’s not something you can manufacture on your own. Grace is a work of God. But you can notice when you have grace for others around you because you pause more, listen longer, and rest rather than refute. He adds a similar tool to this called “Give it 5 minutes,” if we are willing to let something sink in and allow for process, we may just allow new information in if we just give it 5 minutes instead of jumping to shut it down.
The person who genuinely wants to think will have to develop strategies for recognizing the subtlest of social pressures, confronting the pull of the ingroup and disgust for the outgroup. The person who wants to think will have to practice patience and master fear.
The people you hang around the most (name 5) are the people you are most going to be like.
1 Corinthians 15:33
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
Amongst those 5 people you will have to confront the pull to adopt, act, or mimic their thinking, behaviors, and way of being. You will have to discern the good and the bad. And you will also have to resist the bent to make their “other” people outside this group your “other.”
We must remember that we walk by grace, but we are also not foolish enough to partner with darkness. So thinking is a must.
all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we’re right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings. Thinking independently, solitarily, “for ourselves,” is not an option.
We have to learn to think well of ourselves!
Good thing for my family
We got to meet the newest member of the family this past week. My son is an uncle for the 4th time.
Good thing for our Church Family
Our Noah married Adeline! So many of us there from my church were on the Youth Team when he was just a teenager. Some were teens themselves back then. Some work alongside him at church. We watched him grow up, hold to his convictions, become a godly young man who loves the kids of the next generation. We are beyond elated to see him marry his bride, Adeline. She is just a sweet and bright light of Christ, and she adores him. We thank God for them.
Thanks for listening,
Starla
Sunday2Monday 