“Father, we are nothing but dirt mixed with water, sculpted into the form we now know as human life by Your mighty hands.  You designed us, built us up, and then breathed Your breath into our lungs.  It is You who gave us life.  How can we, the subject of Your artwork, boastfully walk around from day-to-day ignoring You, complaining, telling You how it should be, or worse, saying there is no God?  You  who made us what we are; You who saw something special in a mud puddle that day when you were sitting in a garden gazing down at your reflection.  Your eyes widened, ‘I will make man, and he will be in My image!’  Our very existence is owed to You; every  place our feet touches belongs to You; and everything that happens ‘happens’, good and bad alike, because You have allowed it to happen.  And then, You did the most incredible thing, my Creator; You loved these creatures who came from nothing but filth and dirt so much that You came down to the place of dust and set Your feet upon the ground in a man called Jesus.  You did this not for yourself, but for us…mere blobs of clay…so that we could have eternal life and freedom from our enemy, Satan.  Your only purpose was to taste torment and death, as we, so that we could finally be completely free.  Let us always remember our place, and remain humble before You.  For the servant is not greater than his master.  Selah.”  -Lyn Leahz

How often do we see people who climb to the top and become great because someone else helped them get there?  It was someone else who gave them that chance, or helped them financially, or with their own established clout?  But then when the person gets to the top, their head swells, and they forget how it was they got there to begin with.  Suddenly, the humble and thankful person they once were is buried in the past, and everything is about ‘self.’  They are now too good for everyone else, they only socialize with those of their importance, no longer can they mingle with the average people, they ride in fancy cars with chauffeurs and body guards, or drive an expensive car most people couldn’t afford.  Their name brand designer clothing and enormous mansion are plastered all over the covers of magazines, and crowds gather just to get a glimpse as they walk down the red carpet.

When it comes to God, our Creator and our Father, do we see ourselves in this picture?  Has the human race risen so far above in an effort to create that we have forgotten how it all started?  Have we neglected the reason for our existence?  Our purpose?  (something we can never do..for even the egg comes from the woman, the seed from the man, and the spirit from God!  Create in Genesis comes from the Hebrew word bara, to make something out of  nothing!  We will never be able to make something out of nothing!)

SELF.  The most famous person of today…more famous than the President of the United States.  How many words can we think of that include this famous individual?  We hear them all of the time these days, and there are hundreds of books labeled with their name.

• self-abnegation
• self-absorbed
• self-actualization
• self-addressed
• self-adhesive
• self-aggrandizement
• self-appointed
• self-assurance
• self-assured
• self-awareness
• self-centered
• self-denial
• self-destruct
• self-described
• self-winding
• self-worth
• self-titled
• self-sustaining
• self-service
• self-serving
• self-willed
• self-taught
• self-styled
• self-sacrifice
• self-rule
• self-righteous
• self-restraint
• self-respect
• self-reliant
• self-monitoring
• self-pity
• self-regulatory
• self-proclaimed
• self-preservation
• self-possessed
• self-portrait
• self-made
• selfless
• selfish
• self-inflicted
• self-interest
• self-indulgent
• self-improvement
• self-imposed
• self-important
• self-image
• selfhood
• self-help
• self-government
• self-fulfilling prophecy
• self-expression
• self-explanatory
• self-evident
• self-esteem
• self-destruction
• self-destructive
• self-determination
• self-discipline
• self-doubt
• self-educated
• self-effacing
• self-described
• self-denial
• self-deprecating
• self-conscious
• self-congratulatory
• self-defense
• self-control
• self-deception

Do you know which one stands out to me the most in this list?  SELF-ish!  The world has become a very SELF-centered place.  Whatever it takes to make yourSELF feel better, even at the expense of another (as long as you’re politically correct about it) then do it.  Who cares that it defies everything God has told you to do or not to do, or if it involves ancient cult practices that do not claim the true God, Adonai, as their source…just do it!  That’s what the world is screaming…get rich quick, have the best body out there, pamper yourSELF!

Hey, I know, what about self-LESS, without self?  Lose the self altogether and you just have less…kind of a humbling word.  Hey, there’s a thought!

I was quite surprised (I guess I shouldn’t have been, really) to see on the cover of a popular woman’s magazine..one of the ones that should be covered up, but isn’t always…streaming boldly across the page like a screaming harlot, “How To Get Naked In Public and Get Away With It!”  Then I saw magazines for young girls with topics such as, “Sex Tips”, “How To Hide ‘Things’ From Your Parents”, “Which Birth Control Method Is Best,” and more.

Is this how we get to the top these days?  Sex, Sex, and more Sex.  Self, Self, and more Self.  Self and Sex.

The runner-up is managing stress.  In a world of so much stress, where stress is the leading cause of death, there are hundreds of products to help you manage your stress better…from sex, to meditation (and I’m not talking about the kind the Bible teaches), to diet, pills, vitamins, exercise, music, etc.  You name it!  What ever happened to pray, spend time in the word of God, meditate on the things of God and on His word, sing praises to Him, go to church and find yourSELF a spiritual family?  Does anyone think outside of the ‘box’ of immorality and self anymore?

So how does this mix in with the very beginning of this post?  How did we go from our lowliness, to self and sex?  It all fits together perfectly–godlessness.  We live in a godless world.  Everything that is great, according to the world’s standards, is without God.  Just as this article started out, about forgetting how we got here, so has this world long forgotten.

How many of us wake up in the morning and look into the mirror at our face and say, “Wow!  God made that!  Whoo hoo, what a wonderful sculpture..look at those eyes and cheekbones; beautiful!”

Or, how many of us take our daily walk and think, “My legs are moving, and my heart is beating…whooh, and I can feel the blood flowing…and wow, God did that!  How amazing the way He made my body!”

And finally, how often do we put our underwear and our shoes on, or tear a piece of toilet paper off the roll as we sit upon our porcelain throne and think, “Gee wiz, I sure am blessed.  I wear these shoes, wipe with this toilet paper, and wow, I am even able to sit on such a fine porcelain seat because God saw fit to place these things in my life.  How blessed I am!”  You know,  people not too long ago didn’t have toilets, or toilet paper!  Have you ever thought about that?

As funny as this sounds, or as silly, do we think about the little things God has given us?  Do we trust Him?  Do we have faith in Him?

Here’s my favorite example of faith a Sunday school teacher gave us kids when I was a little girl.  She said, “Did you girls think about that chair you’re sitting in when you sat down in it?”  We stared, confused.

She cleared her throat.  “Before you sat down, did you stop first and worry whether the chair was going to fall from beneath you if you placed your fanny in it?”

We giggled, “No.”

She smiled, “This is faith.  Doing it without a doubt, a fear, or  a thought.  You automatically assume without even realizing it that the chair you’re about to sit in is going to support you.  Well, the Lord will support you the same way if you trust Him without thought, fear, or doubt.”

Thank God for all of the things in your life, great and small alike.  Sit in His presence and lean back against Him without worry, thought, or fear; He’ll surely support you!  Don’t forget that He made you, so He knows you well, and He loves you.  You owe your everything to Him!  The world is in a mess, don’t be like them, don’t look like them.  Don’t talk like them or walk like them, lest you become all about yourSELF and forget what’s really important.  Oh, and don’t squeeze the Charmin, it was a small but necessary gift from God, treat it with respect!  After all, what would we do without it?

Categories: Christian Living, Interesting Bible Topics

Tags: Adonai, Bible, Birth control, Get Naked, God, Jesu, Names of God in Judaism, Satan