The source of our problems - Greg Laurie - http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/the-source-of-our-problems/
Pastor Greg Laurie reveals key to finding true happiness
When author William Kirkpatrick was a professor at Boston College, he started noticing signs of what he called moral illiteracy among his students. In his book, "Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong," he writes that when the subject of the Ten Commandments came up in class one day, he began listing them on the board. But the class, working together, could not come up with the complete list.
This makes sense when you consider the fact that so many schools have done their best to remove God and the Bible from our school campuses. You can't post the Ten Commandments on the wall of a classroom - or a courtroom.
In our culture today, children are awash in intense violence and killing on television, in movies, in video games and on the Internet. And many of these young people are being raised without a value system to speak of.
I'm sorry to say that it may only get worse unless something dramatic happens in our country, and that something dramatic is nothing short of a nationwide spiritual awakening. It is called a revival, and we need one again. That is because the source of our problems is deep down inside: it is the problem of the heart.
God said to the prophet Jeremiah, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV). The heart is wicked. Humanity is not basically good; humanity is basically bad. Really bad. If you believe that humanity is basically good, then you will have a hard time explaining a lot of things that are going on in our world today. But if you believe that humanity is bad, as the Bible teaches, but also believe that the human heart can be changed, then you will have an accurate assessment and a certain hope.
The New Testament book of James sums it up clearly:
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God (4:1-2 NIV).
James posed a passionate rhetorical question: What causes fights and quarrels among you? Then he answered it with another rhetorical question that takes us to the heart of the subject: Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?
The answer is yes. That is where they come from. In fact, this is the answer to all of our questions about conflict in our families, our culture and our own lives. It comes from within. I know we would like to blame it on other people or other things. But really, the essential problem is inside of us.
James uses a word in this passage that is worth taking a closer look at: desires. It comes from the Greek word hedone, from which we get our English word hedonism. Of course, hedonism is the belief that the chief end of life is to have fun, that pleasure and good times are all that matters.
Still, it is important to know that pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. You might get the impression from some Christians that pleasure is bad, that you must wear bland clothes, eat bland food, speak in a bland way and live a bland life.
That may be theway of some Christians, but it is not the way of Christ. I think the Christian life is the most pleasurable life around. But we don't get our pleasure from the same things that non-Christians do.
The Bible speaks of the joy of the Lord and true happiness that comes from God. The psalmist, speaking of God, said, "You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand" (Psalm 16:11 NIV).
Have you ever walked by a bar early in the evening during what they call "happy hour"? The people inside don't look too happy to me.
Again, the psalmist said of God, "No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly" (Psalm 84:11 NKJV). There is nothing that God tells me to avoid that is good. If he withholds it from me, then it is because it would only harm me. So everything that I need and everything that is good, God will let me have. And if it is not good, then he will hold it back.
Granted, the Bible does tell us not to do certain things. For example, it tells us to stay away from sexual immorality, not to lie, not to steal, not to kill and so forth.
Some might say, "God is spoiling my fun."
But if it were a good thing, then God would let us do it. And if he tells us not to do something, then it is not a good thing. It is a bad thing.
God knows everything, and he is looking out for our best interests - not trying to make our lives miserable. But if we allow pleasure to be our driving force in life, if we are living for the moment and living for the fun, then it will end in misery and ruin.
It has been said that the best cure for hedonism is an attempt to practice it. If you go out and chase after the things you think will bring you pleasure, you will come to the same conclusion that Solomon did. He said to himself, "'Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.' But that also proved to be meaningless. 'Laughter,' I said, 'is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?'" (Ecclesiastes 2:1-2 NIV).
Going back to James, he was saying that if our intense desire is to please ourselves, it will be the source of all our problems.
If we live for ourselves and for our happiness and for our pleasure, then we will be miserable people. Isn't it ironic that the people who chase after pleasure never really experience it? They may experience a little happiness and pleasure here and there, but nothing to speak of. Yet the people who live for God will find happiness as a byproduct.
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