Life is hard...

I have to admit. It's been a rough week. It seems like everywhere I turn I am bombarded with messages and images that are begging me to satisfy my inner hunger through sex, pornography, or other pleasures. This isn't the first time I have encountered such attacks, but they seem rather pronounced and constant lately.

I was reading this morning in Job 28. Verse 28 says, "And to man He said, 'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.'" As the temptations and lies have swirled around my life this past week I needed this reminder. Wisdom comes through fearing God and fleeing evil.

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. All my life I have been slow to learn the most important lessons of life. This lesson of fearing the Lord and fleeing evil is an especially hard one for me to follow on a consistent basis. I often do not fear the Lord. I often allow myself to hang around evil, sometimes because I am unaware of its presence, other times because I am simply too lazy to flee.

God wants me to live honestly, but He also wants me to become wise. Living wisely means I understand who I am in the presence of God - this produces joyful terror ("fear of the Lord"). To live wisely also requires that I recognize evil and flee from it - quickly! I pray that today I will take one small step closer to wisdom.

Learning through life...

jonathan