Would He Approve.

Preface: When I first wrote this I wrote it as neighbor. I would like to correct that word. It is both neighbor in the sense of everyone, and also in the sense of our fathers before us. The ones who raised us in the same patterns of their fathers before them.

As we journey through life we look to our neighbor for example on how they lived. They followed along the paths of society finding the "dry places" the places where they looked to alcohol, gluttony, TV, movies, games, to lust, to addiction. They even thought of the work of their own hands as a thing that holds meaning, the very work itself being the god which provides them all things. The neighbors of our lives looked for something to sustain them inside, the very thing that imprisons them. If we look to the example of the Old testament: we have an example of this very same action playing out over and over. The Hebrew look to God, God gives them an example, a form of the way in whom He is. They see the example of God and choose to follow in that example. As time progresses they look among themselves for examples and see all the way's people are prospering, even some persons not following Gods example "thieves and liars". The result is a perversion of person through the example of the ones not following God. This person then looks upon the things of the earth to lust after. The Hebrew fall away and begin worshiping the things they were warned not too. Their wants align with lesser things. God saddened by this asks that they repent, and sometimes that they go willingly into captivity for their wrongs. The want of their flesh is the example of the neighbor they follow to the same despair they have known. This leads to the need for the people to cut themselves off from the ways that they have chosen to oppress themselves upon their lusts/idols. Assuming they choose captivity and repent the result is a God that will go to any length to keep them alive, so long as they have an unwavering faith in Him(die for Him, or even die to their old self for Him.).

So we have an example of how man asserts Himself through the study of man towards the things of man and ultimately end up with nothing. We have the other spectrum as well. When Man puts God as the center, God ends up rewarding with basically everything. It's not easy, you're going to wrestle with yourself against God. What that means is you're going to wrestle to maintain your way above His. The only person I think to wrestle with God and win, was Jacob. Because, He never let go of God. In other words He never said God could go and leave Him, he demanded God bless him clinging for dear life. To further the idea, He wrestled the self of his own sin to the ground and through that brought down God to see him and bless him.

Not all of us, even myself have anywhere near that kind of relationship with God where we have commanded even sin to bow to us. I struggle daily. Thank you Jesus. All glory to The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.