Your Moment at the Well
The Lord’s insight. The more of life’s pleasures you deny yourself, the more pleasure of life you can enjoy.
Mark 6:31: “And Jesus said to them, come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while.”
Ephesians 4:22-24: “Put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the Spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”
A few years ago, I decided to deny myself the pleasure of an ice-cold Dr Pepper. I did this for 40 days. Now, I love Dr Peppers. Everyone who really know me knows that. So, denying myself my favorite drink was no easy thing. After just a few days, I thought my desire to have one would kill me.
It wasn’t easy for me, but I made it through those 40 days of denial. And when I finally had another Dr Pepper, it wasn’t the same as before. I have not gone back to the way it was before. While I still love a Dr Pepper, my favorite drink is no longer the same to me.
I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences in life. You have been able to deny yourself the pleasure of doing or of having something that you enjoyed a lot. I hope that like me, your life is not the same. I was dying to enjoy the pleasure of a Dr Pepper only to find that I could have pleasure in life without it.
Our carnal lives can never be satisfied by the pleasures of life. The more we want the more we will want. The more you drink, the more you will drink. The more you eat, the more you will eat. Our old life is never being renewed, it is always being strengthened. There is no rest in our old life. In our carnality we will die to keep enjoying ourselves while we live.
Jesus knows that life needs rest. To rest, He knows that we must learn to live a renewed life daily. He told his disciples to take a break from the work they had been doing. They needed rest as they left the old life to have new life He offered.
Sometimes we hang onto the old persons of our carnal lives so tightly that we fail to fully put on the new life Christ has for us. We hang onto the old so we cannot grab hold of the new. Ephesians 4 is encouraging us to let go of our old selves and of our desires for pleasure so that we can have more of the pleasures available to us.
We must learn there is no pleasure in anger. There is no pleasure in selfishness. There is no pleasure in pride. There is no pleasure in condemnation, in accusation, in having abundance, in gluttony and in many things like these. The more we allow these pleasures, the less pleasure we will have in life.
If you are dying to enjoy life, you must stop allowing your old life to live each day. So, learn that the greatest pleasure in life is the one you experience when you deny your old self so a new you can come to life. There is great pleasure to go from corrupt words to words of life, from hate to love, from working deceit to working what is well and good, from having much to giving much and from being unlearned to being taught by the Word of God.
When we continue to live for and to seek pleasures for our lives, nothing about our lives will change. That life will be strengthened. When we find that we are denying ourselves the pleasures of life we will know that the new life is alive and working in us daily. Nothing changes about the old you; that old person you were yesterday wakes up every new day.
Everything changes about the new you all the time. The same you never returns tomorrow to live again. A new you wakes up every new day when you allow that new person to live.
Pleasure in life comes to you most assuredly when you die to the pleasure of living your old life. Are you dying to enjoy life. Real enjoyment comes only to the new person you can be, never to the person you have always been.
Live a Delivered Life.
Live Delivered 