The Process of Pain

What causes a person to abandon God’s Word as a guide for their lives?

Perhaps the fear of man has replaced the fear of God. We are a culture that is obsessive about what others think about what we believe. Social media has bred a generation of pundits who seem obsessed with folly rather than truth. 

The Scriptures clearly state that those who follow God will go through a narrow gate and travel a narrow road. God’s followers will be pursued and persecuted while being pressured to move the broader way that is easier and more comfortable. 

This fear of man is misplaced fear, and those who embrace such thinking will one day wish they lived their lives as part of the minority who loved and followed God.

We might also abandon God due to our proximity to the thoughts, ways, and desires of the Godless.  If we develop a lifestyle in which our wealth and comfort are dependent upon the Godless, we live compromised lives to maintain our wealth and comfort. These compromises rob us of the very joy in life we have counted on them to provide. 

The fear of man rather than God starts the process that eventually becomes too complicated because of our intertwining with the Godless. Ultimately, we lose our discernment within the pile of presumptions we have created about God, His people, and the people of this world. False assumptions lead to a meaningless and hopeless existence. 

The misplaced fear, proximity to the world, and false presumptions have groomed us to live lives replete with “secret” sins. Because of our ignorance, we believe that our sin is justified as long as we are not caught or exposed to the very people we fear and have adjusted our lives to emulate. 

In the end, we are no longer a people of prayer unless the prayers are to order the god of our own making around and prove, to the people we fear, that we are significant because our prayers get results. 

Our actions are byproducts of our thinking and ideas, so if we want to see different actions, we need to adjust our thinking/ideas.

We need to start with evaluating who or what we fear, and if it is anything other than God, we must repent and adjust. Then, we must ask if we have developed a closeness to Godlessness that is more comfortable than being with the Godly. If we have a proximity problem, the solution is a change in proximity. 

Once we have thought through what we fear and with what realm we are closest, and we have adjusted ourselves, we need to ask some questions as to what we expect from God and then discover what the Scriptures say about our presumptions. As we search the Scriptures, we must be willing to allow them to expose our “secret sins,” realizing there are no secrets with God, and we should then repent.

Then our prayers lives will be genuine, vibrant, and vital to our lives. 

Processes affect results, so those who ignore the process will always feel victimized by the events in life.