What is your True Desire?

Something was brought to my attention the other day that I feel needs to be addressed. This is the question, "Is it okay for Christians to smoke marijuana?" This is a legitimate question. There are three local dispensaries right around us for medical marijuana. This is a question that many have for it seems that the government is now for marijuana, because they are selling it! So, I started searching. One of my favorite places for research is the blog, Evidence for God from Science. So much of my research on this topic comes from Richard Deem who is a brilliant scientist and professor. I am not going to go into the scientific research that he does. You can go to his blog and read all you want on the science of marijuana. In fact, I encourage you to do so. I am going to talk from my personal experience. So here we go...

When I think of smoking marijuana, or getting drunk, or taking other drugs that get in the way of my mind working as it should, I immediately think of my relationship with God and other people. Oh, yes those physical feelings that I experience in the moment of that high are alluring, but the consequences that come afterwards are what keeps coming to my mind. It is not really the detrimental consequences that I think of. It is the consequences of being able to have that relationship that I so desperately need from my God and others around me. "Jesus replied:‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your MIND.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.'" (Matthew 22:37). How are we loving our Lord, our God with all of our mind if we are blocking hearing Him with the things we place in us?

For me, in this time of my life, I no longer worry about the sexual consequences of sleeping with the wrong guy because I get drunk, or about any of the physical consequences that many war against when they are young. The consequences that keep my attention are the consequences that I see with my relationship with my God. My God is not just an opinion that I have. He is the center of my life and we have a very real relationship together. Why would I do something that would get in the way of this relationship? The only answer that I can come up with are these: I either do not really believe that I can have a true relationship with Him, or I do not really love Him as He has instructed me to love Him, or I am just too concerned about myself and what I want in that moment to really care about Him or about how I am affecting others around me. Basically, am I being selfish and just concerned about what I want in that moment. Not about the whole picture that God sees in every decision that I make in every moment.

“An opinion is a position you hold with a varied degree of intensity that merely voices your preference. A conviction is that which is rooted in your conscience. So that if you were to toy with your opinions you are going to be jossiling with your preferences. If you are going to toy with a conviction you are going to have to deal with your conscience before you altered it," (RZ, Convictions that conquered the world).

My God and what He expects from me is not just an opinion that I hold, but a conviction that has change my life forever. 2 Timothy 3:1-5, "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, LOVERS OF PLEASURE RATHER THAN LOVERS OF GOD, having a form of godliness but denying its power." I cannot seek myself first, but Him and I know that when I allow myself to indulge in the physical pleasures of something that will alter my mind, then I know that my relationship with Him will be altered. I am not willing to give Him up. This is a conviction for me, not just an opinion. I have done my research. I have experienced this life with Him as my center. I know what I have and what I could loose.

I have found my freedom in Christ and through Him I choose to never be a slave to something that will control my life. I am a bond servant to my Lord. I am no longer a slave to drugs that call you every waking moment. I can now have fun without them. I know what gives me true life. I am not blind to what the world offers as life, but what it will destroy in the process. That moment of getting high may not affect you physically while you are doing it. You may not suffer one bit for that pleasure that you seek, but you will be affected and so will those that you do it with. It will get in the way of your relationship with Christ, and your ability to hear God clearly. Those that you do it with, will not be able to see God through you like you wish they could. You will not be able to love the Lord your God as He has called you to and you will not be able to love those around you like you think you can, if you are getting high. Are you really a Christian, a Christ follower?

"Then He [Jesus] said to them all: '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)" Who are you really following if you are a slave to your physical desires? Do you hold to an opinion or to a conviction? Do the research and find the truth.

Click on the title above "What is your True Desire" and it will take you to your first form of research on this matter. Then search more and learn the truth. At the bottom of this link there are two other "Related Pages, 'The Medical Benefits of smoking Marijuana', and 'Does the bible talk about Drugs.'" Find out what you stand on, Opinion or Conviction.