In Training

Psalm 16, "Keep me safe, O God, for in You I take refuge. I said to the LORD, 'You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.' As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight... LORD, You have assigned me my portion and my cup; You have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the LORD always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand."

Oh, how I love my Lord. My desire is to know Him. Intimately, I seek Him. My flesh is a battle ground and my glory is to find Him who battles for me. My life and my desires have been at war against my God, but now I can see the truth and that truth will set me free. For a time I may be having to live a more strict existence, but when the battle is won my freedom will reign. I have never had power over my flesh before. My life has been a life in slavery to every temptation that approached me. I have always felt weak and I learned how to lie so that I could continue on in slavery. What does He desire for me? How can I please the One who has set me free? Does He want me to continue in an existence that is now full of rules and limitations? No He wants me to learn to love Him more and for my desires to be for Him alone. 1 Samuel 15:22-23, "But Samuel replied: 'Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry'..."

I don't always understand why God is asking me to do certain things. I often have an idea, but usually that assumption turns out to be wrong, or at least incomplete. We have a tendency to see in the physical. We even look at ourselves outwardly, in the flesh, rather than looking to our inner self. God sees our actions, but He sees more than our actions. He sees our hearts and our motives behind that action. He sees our hearts better than we do. We often fool ourselves into thinking that our hearts are good, even when our actions tell a different story. 1 Samuel 16:7, "But the LORD said to Samuel, 'Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.'"

We cannot get our actions and our hearts confused. I used to think that my actions did not tell my heart, but I was wrong. I would go out into the world and do some very horrible things. But then think, "I may doing bad, but my heart is good." I was wrong. My heart was bad, for my desires were evil. Then I came to a point in thinking, "I am doing good, so my heart is now good." I was wrong, for even though I was doing good, my desires are still for the flesh. I so desire for my heart and my actions to be in worship together. I want to see the truth in myself, so that I can walk in harmony and true worship with my Savior. Throughout my life I have been given the privilege by God to train my appetite. Oh, how my heart has been broken by what I have done and how I have abused my body. He is now taking me on a different path and this path is harder than it was supposed to be, all because of the training that I have done in the past. I have allowed my ideas and passions to confuse my body into believing a lie about what it is I think I need. In allowing my flesh to hunger for the wrong things, those wrong things have ended up devouring me. I have lived my life to see how far I could go, as close to the wrong side of living as I could get. What I must now do is to retrain my mind and my desires. It is much easier to say no, before you have tasted it. Than to say no, after you have tasted it. (RZ) I am in a training that God did not desire for me, but one that I chose when I was younger, for my desires have been trained by my living. My desire now is to live for my God. I want my desires and my heart to reflect His. I want my life to be a life of true worship to Him.

We have been given the privilege of training our appetites. What are you training your appetite for? Whether you want to believe it or not, what you do today affects how you live tomorrow. When you finally look back upon your life at the devastation and ruin you will see that it was not just in crossing a line that you have found devastation. But, it was in not drawing that line well before you were faced with that temptation that ultimately lead you down that broken path. That small thing that we choose to do today is actually training our appetites for our tomorrow. What path are we really choosing today for our tomorrow?