STOP! Evaluate Your Impulses

Passion is defined as a strong fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for something special. You can see how passion can center on either righteous or evil objectives. Passion has the ability to create emotions for motivating a person to possess what is thought to be absolutely essential for happiness.

Passion eventually reveals strengths and weaknesses, which define character and beliefs. In the book of Judges, Samson had trouble distinguishing between following what God approved of and satisfying his own desires. When an impulse or desire became conscious, he acted with little thought of healthy boundaries.

  

The Lord God cautions us to evaluate an impulse before acting on it. “Do not be as children tossed about by every wind and doctrine,” and “Add goodness and knowledge to your faith. To these add self-control and endurance.” Evaluating impulses requires patience, but God through the power of the Holy Spirit will give self-control and patience to those who earnestly seek these boundary markers.  

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Make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge; and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with [Christian] affection, and [Christian] affection with love for everyone.

~2 Peter 1:5-7 New Living Translation

Values: Boundary Markers for Living - Part 3

The idea that God is interested in you may be difficult to believe and accept. He not only has an interest in his creation, but he pursues you for his purpose so your days on the earth will be worthwhile. What does he ask in return? To love him with all your heart, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This command is not easy because it requires identifying and analyzing your values. Someone told me her priorities were her career first, then family, her social life, and finally God. Then she was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Confined to convalescence for an extended time, she was forced to rethink her purpose and goals for her life.

Identifying and analyzing your values may result in life-changing decisions. That God is interested in you and will pursue you is validated by Jesus' words, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." To accept that God is interested in you may require rearranging your values to include his love and purpose for you.  

Values: Boundary Markers for Living - Part 2

Values serve as boundary markers for everyday living. Values are guidelines for management of personal conduct. Do they provide guarantees for a perfect, sin-free life? No! We cannot say, "I have values, and they protect me from any temptation or whenever internal impulses push me toward sin."

The Ten Commandments are about values. They help Christians establish values and serve as a reminder when there are deviations from those boundaries. Jesus said he came to this world to fulfill the commandments, not to do away with them. Our self-interest and desires pull us away from the commandments and our personal values.

Romans 11 clarifies. "When Israel tried to be right with God by pursuing her own self-interest, Israel failed. God’s chosen ones have always been those who would invite God to pursue his interest in them, and they in turn received his approval." Values become crystal clear when we permit God to pursue his interest in us. Can you do that without hesitation?