SELF-DENIAL

"Temporary means to a certain temporary end."

When God created man, He set him as somewhat of a partner with Himself; Created in His own image and given all authority over creation! Though this was our original design, in our current state, we're not even capable of grasping what all that entails.

When man chose to disobey the precepts of God, he immediately died to who he originally was and became an independent agent; somewhat, a self-governed man. Since that single, fateful decision, man has furiously pursued, in his own power, to recreate the fulfillment that had originally been freely given to him. A broken ambitious man looking to cleverly and independently possess, for his own, everything God had originally put under his dominion. The crowned jewel of God's creation, desperately trying to become God himself.

To this day, the eternal spirit of man feels relentlessly entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but rather than regaining them from His eternal Creator, he futilely goes about trying to conjure them up himself with his temporary means to a certain temporary end. Self - the uncontested, number one obstacle to eternal Life, and always working against God!

Even now the reader should feel offended at such thoughts, because we read through self! A dilemma that cannot be overcome by self, because of self-preservation! I am caught up in a natural, short-term race to accomplish all that I can be before I die, and I can't even see the futility in that. Oh, wretched man that I am!

With the gentleness and unspeakable Wisdom of the Holy Spirit, I am given glimpses (convictions) of my lost state, and the inescapable death that is certain. With these convictions, a gentle Call to die to myself now and reclaim the Life denied in the garden. There is nothing here in this fallen world, and no one of this fallen world that will survive the shaking to come, thus, there is no value to the things down here for the man reunited to His God. It has been said, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in exchange for what cannot be taken away. And more recently, I don't want to gain the whole world and lose my soul!

*******

And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

~Genesis 1:26 KJV

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

~Genesis 2:17 KJV

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

~Romans 7:24 KJV

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

~Romans 8:7 KJV