Looks

 Looks can be deceiving. At no time in the history of mankind has this been more true. It’s come to the point that trusting your own eyes is a dangerous prospect, and folks who seemed the pinnacle of substantive moral fiber turn out to be less than, trying to justify their newfound position by using such trite drivel as insisting their position has evolved or they grew into this new way of thinking. More often than not, there was a check with a few zeros that swayed their viewpoint, but it seems more noble to say you grew and evolved than to say you sold yourself for a few bucks and a new car.

Before temptation has a chance to bloom into desire, and desire has an opportunity to conceive and birth forth sin, the temptation itself can seem like a lifeline to many. By definition, man is tempted when he is drawn away by his desires and enticed, and very rarely have I come across individuals whose desire is pain, sadness, or emotional damage. Desire presupposes some sort of pleasure, and man is tempted when he does not realize that their desire is fatal if allowed to metamorphose and produce sin. It is the only natural progression of desire, resulting in sin every time. The butterfly cannot become a caterpillar. The caterpillar always becomes the butterfly.

Temptation is quick to hide the consequences of giving in to one’s desires and highlights the momentary pleasure it may offer. If every man who crawled into a bottle or some strange woman’s bed considered the final iteration of what their sin would produce before they did it, there would be far fewer broken homes, broken lives, and broken people.

James is trying to open the eyes of those who might read his letter to the reality that hell is not a party destination, and the temporary fun that sin might proffer isn’t worth the lifetime of regret and repercussions it carries. Five minutes of pleasure on the front end for a lifetime’s worth of pain on the back end isn’t worth it, but just like taking out payday loans for 300% interest, people still do it every day.

If it’s sin, don’t let it in. If you put lipstick on a platypus, it’s still a platypus. How do you know it’s a sin? The Bible has a pretty detailed list of what constitutes sin, but a good rule of thumb is to consider whether whatever is trying to entice you will bring you closer or draw you further away from God and your relationship with Him. That is presuming the desire of your heart is a deeper, more profound relationship with God, and not just paying Him lip service, hoping it’s enough to get the fire insurance everyone’s so quick to promise.

Other than their personal opinion, which has no Biblical basis or foundation, what can they produce as a guarantee of the aforementioned fire insurance? You should know the answer to that one already, but in case you don’t, nothing! There is no guarantee they can produce because there is none to be had.

In their unending quest to find an easier path to heaven, countless souls have been duped into believing that there is one. There are no alternatives, no switchbacks, no rabbit trails, no overgrown ruts as yet undiscovered, and no bypasses. The way is singular, and it is Christ, and anyone not pointing you to Him is not only doing you a disservice, but they have no love for your soul and are indifferent as to where you will spend eternity.

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

Jesus said this. Not some guy with overlarge gums trying to convince you to have a recurring offering on your credit card every two weeks. I may come off as sounding frustrated, and that’s because I am. The reason is that even though the old guard of sheep fleecers and money grubbers are dying off or becoming so incontinent they can’t be on camera long enough to make an emotional plea for your money, there is an up-and-coming generation that’s picking up where the other guys left off. 

While the other guys skirted the issue of what sin is and what sin isn’t, the new generation is insisting that nothing is a sin except for you not making an offering to their ministry because you’re impeding the work of the Kingdom by failing to add a zero.

We’re getting close to the finish line, but we’re being told we don’t need to bother crossing it. Temptation is being hurled at us like Molotov cocktails at a mafia wake, but we’re being told we shouldn’t resist it.

I’m sounding like a broken record even to myself, but some things need repeating so often that they become ingrained. The Word of God is the plumb line. The word of God is the final authority. The Word of God is preeminent, and if man contradicts the Word, no matter who the man is, man is in the wrong and the Word in the right.

Your feelings don’t matter. The way you think it should be doesn’t matter. Whether or not you perceive it as fair doesn’t matter, and how a denomination interprets a specific text is irrelevant; the only thing of import is that Jesus is the way, and you walk therein because no man goes to the Father but by Him.

James 1:16-18, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.