Episode 1. Lie #6 – The It’s All About Now
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They tell us we should live in the moment. And we should – we should enjoy here and now. But the devil wants to deceive us with the lie that this moment, is all there is; that it’s all about here …
They tell us we should live in the moment. And we should – we should enjoy the here and now. But the devil wants to deceive us with the lie that this moment, is all there is; that it’s all about here and now. And that’s just not true.
It’s Monday again. Mondayitis – all that sort of thing. Back at work again for most, hard getting going some Mondays isn’t it? Can I tell you? I’m always a bit excited on Mondays; new week, chance to chat with you again. By and large I look forward to Monday’s, how about you?
You see the thing for most of us who kind of work generally a Monday to Friday thing, is that the weekend is about us; not just about us, family, friends, relaxing, that’s the theory right? Of course it doesn’t always quite work out that way.
Some of us have to work over the weekend and that’s something of a sacrifice, others well, there’s running the kids to their various sporting events or music or social activities and then there’s this and that and before you know it you can look back at the weekend and think, ‘Hang on a minute, what happened to it, where’s it all gone? I didn’t get a rest; I spent the whole time racing around after other people? What about me? What about some time for me?
And pretty soon we can start resenting that. There’s something about the here and now, there’s something about missing out on opportunity enjoy now. To enjoy the moment as they say.
I mean sure there’s tomorrow, sure there’s the future, and hey there may even be an eternity but well, eternity? Forever? Nah blow that, I just want to enjoy today, live in the moment, to hell with eternity.
And that’s pretty much how things go. To hell with it, people say, give it to me today, I want everything today. I used to be like that and this whole living in today thing, the fact that there is an eternity becomes completely obscured. It’s the easiest thing in the world to live just for today and the more we want it, the more we want to enjoy what the world has to offer the more obscured the reality of eternity becomes, the more distant, the more unreal, the more implausible eternity becomes.
Now there’s someone listening today and saying to themselves, “Well yeah, I guess but that’s for non Christians”. By the way I don’t like that term non Christians, I never have, I’ve never thought of myself say as a non Buddhist although I guess I am right?
So someone’s saying that this focus on the here and now is really only for people who don’t believe in Jesus and yes most of the people in that boat focus very much on the here and now but can I tell you something? As a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, as a guy who’s decided to spend his life telling others about Jesus, the Jesus who came for me in my darkest hour, I find it really easy to get caught up in the here and now too.
Because stuff just happens, we do. We run, we work, we play, stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff and the totally biggest reality in our lives becomes the here and now; the biggest reality in our lives becomes getting the most out of today that we can. And when that doesn’t happen, when we get to the end of the day or the weekend and we look back and we feel like we’ve missed out what we experience is resentment. It should have been better, I should have got more out of it than I did.
It’s all about the here and now and can I tell you something? Our enemy the devil loves, he absolutely delights in obscuring the reality of eternity from our sight.
Today we’re continuing again in our ‘Top 10 lies the Devil Wants You to Believe’ and today is lie number 6 which is where we’re up to in the top 10, it’s lie number 6 and it says that ‘it’s all about today’ and when he combines that with lie number 1 which is ‘that the devil doesn’t exist’, he ends up playing merry hell with our heads and with our hearts and with our lives.
I don’t know if you’ve read the Book of Job in the Old Testament but it’s all about when the devil goes to God and asks His permission to ruin Job’s life. Job’s a godly man, he’s blameless, a really good guy and God nevertheless gives the devil permission to progressively take things away from Job – more and more and more and then when Job hits rock bottom the devil takes away yet more all in hope of turning Job against God.
And yet Job never forsakes God but what he does do, he goes back to God time and time and time again and asks basically, “God what is going on? God why are you doing this? God when is this going to end? God what have I done wrong?” Does that sound familiar? What’s our problem? Our problem is when we’re in those places we don’t want to be. We lose sight of the fact that God’s got a bigger thing happening.
Do you see how easy it is for us to fall for the devil’s lie that the only thing that exists, the only thing that matters is the here and now? The stuff we see, the stuff we experience and most importantly the stuff we feel.
Feelings are so important after all the advertising industry has been telling us for years now that it’s all about me, it’s all about you and so what we do is we set about making our here and now as good and as comfortable and as wonderful and as apparently fulfilling as we possibly can and at that point we’ve totally lost the plot, completely lost the plot. Completely swallowed the devils lie hook, line and sinker that there is no eternity, it’s only today that matters. Perfect, he’s rubbing his hands, gotcha. Luke chapter 12 beginning at verse 16:
Jesus told them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, ‘what should I do for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I’ll do this, I’ll pull down my existing barns and build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, ‘soul you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, drink, eat and be merry.
But God said to the man, ‘you fool, for this very night your life is demanded of you and the things that you’ve prepared whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.
He said to his disciples, ‘therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or about your body or what you will wear for life is so much more than food and the body is so much more than clothing.
See Jesus is saying, guys get a grip, there’s an eternity, there’s a future and something happens, something totally awesome happens when we lift up our eyes to gaze upon heavenly things, when we open our eyes to the expansive view of eternity.
All of a sudden the trials and the tribulations we’re going through now, well somehow they fall into perspective. No longer is everything about the here and now and no longer do we live in this constant state of dissatisfaction because somehow the here and now never quite lives up to expectations.
There’s always something to rob us of the satisfaction we think we’re entitled to and that’s because the truth is that we’re living in just a small part of eternity. Again have a listen to the writer of the New Testament Book of 1 John puts this here and now thinking, this only here and now lie in sharp contrast with the truth of eternity. 1 John chapter 2, verse 15:
Do not love the world or the things of the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world for all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches comes not from the Father but from the world and the world and it’s desires are passing away but those who do the will of God, they’ll live forever.
That’s the cold hard reality that one day this world and our association with it is going to pass away and yet the more the devil can dupe us into believing that that’s not true the more he’s going to rob us of our lives, here and now and for all eternity.
It’s knowing the truth, I mean really knowing the truth that actually sets us free.
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