Just Say No?

Have you ever walked through your kitchen and your eyes fell upon the pack of cookies, and instantly your thought is “I know I shouldn’t.” But, then the next set of thoughts come rushing in. Just one cookie, it wont hurt. Then, three cookies later you finally have to pry yourself away from the pack of cookies. What ever happened to mom smacking our hands and telling us “no dessert until after dinner”? What ever happened to listening to that thought?

Just a week ago, I got my tooth pulled, and it’s not the first pulled tooth so I know the deal: barely any eating and taking care of the gaping hole with gentle care. My dentist told me to eat healthy and not to eat hard food. Well, that lasted about 24 hours. At lunch the next the day, I was eating chicken tenders even though it hurt a lot. Then, every day after that I continued to eat more and more things I shouldn’t such as cookies and Chipotle and such things. And now a have a small bump on my gum, and it’s getting infected.

Why is it that as we grow older, we stop relying on mom and dad telling us not to do stuff and we start to rebel?Even more than that, why is it that we hear that voice in our head telling us not to, yet we don’t listen and instead we do it anyways? Even in our spiritual lives, we hear the Lord calling us to follow Him, not to do this, or to do that; we know its the right thing to do, yet often times we don’t listen and we don’t have the self control to stop our own desires and to do what we know we should do. Even though we know that God knows best, even though we know we shouldn’t eat that cookie, we still do, and in the end it ends up being worse for us.

Today, I feel the Lord is calling me to sit back and think before I take that extra cookie. I need to truly let the Holy Spirit guide me in everything I do and every decision I make, big or small, because everything effects me. If I truly want to be obedient, I must listen when that voice says, “Don’t take that cookie.” We must be able to ‘die to ourselves’ so that we may become more fully alive. Who cares if we don’t fill our hunger a little, or we don’t get to taste the goodness of that double stuffed Oreo? But, we will get to taste the victory of living in Christ.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” -Luke 9:23-25 (NIV)