Uncle Akin: Choose Life (Part Sixteen): Respect Laws and Principles.

Saturday 25 March 2017

Choose Life (Part Sixteen): Respect Laws and Principles.

Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:5-6, NKJV)

We continue this week with the story of the sick man healed at the Pool of Bethesda. [John 5:1-15].

In the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis, we see an example of a man who refused to stop digging. His name is Cain. He was caught up in a rut. God did not accept his offering. As it were, God was not answering his prayers. Why you dare to ask? Was it because God did not love him?

Of course not. Far be it from God to stoop down to our mundane way of judging things. He is God, and He remaineth faithful even when we are not. He cannot deny Himself. [2 Timothy 2:13] Was it because God loved Abel more? Sure, NO! God, Himself, is the very definition of love. [1 John 4:7-10]

He cannot love more or less. "He cannot be more God or less God." Surely, loving Abel more was not the case. The answer is in verse 7 of the chapter. It reads,

"If you do well [believing Me and doing what is acceptable and pleasing to Me], will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well [but ignore My instruction], sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you [to overpower you], but you must master it.”" - Amplified Version.

Cain wanted God to accept him on his own terms. He was not willing to make the necessary adjustments (shifts) to meet God’s requirements. As it were, Cain was telling God, “I have my own terms, and you have to make the shift to meet them. How dare you accept my brother's offering and not mine?

Isn't it enough that I brought you something? Isn't my effort worth something?" Really?

"There are ultimately only two possible adjustments to life; one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live. The method of adjusting moral principles to the way men live is just a perversion of the order of things." - Fulton J. Sheen.

Just how many of us do the same today? Though we do it saliently, in some cases, yet with the same import. For things to get better, we have to change. We have to get better. Our environment is simply a (merciless) reflection of who we are on the inside.

"Our environment is simply a (merciless) reflection of who we are on the inside."

For things to get better, we have to get better.

Links to Study Series:

Choose Life (Part Fifteen): Stop Digging.

Choose Life (Part Seventeen): The Word is Sancrosant.