When people go to ‘AA they get up and introduce themselves saying: My name is Tim and I am an alcoholic. The Bible say for us to be lovers of God, not lovers of pleasure. I will use AA’s technique. My name is Tim, and I am a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God.
Arrowsmith wrote a song called “I don’t want to miss a thing.” Won’t I be giving up something if I increase my love of God and decrease my pleasure? Not likely. The only thing that we do here on earth that is real is to love and serve God. When we start to do something that is real our joy starts to increase. Consider praying:
“Father, take away my love of pleasure, and show me Your will.”
When we cut out some pleasure to focus on a Christian trait like meekness, we are focusing on being lovers of God. Meekness involves humility, but more importantly with this habit, it is enduring injury with patience and without resentment.
One of satan’s best trick is to blast you (injury) to tempt you severely. Developing the habit of fighting injury with patience and without resentment is loving God. Why. Because, we have all fallen in the past when bad things happened. Consider praying:
“Father, my life is difficult right now. I will try to handle this problem without resentment. I will keep trying to do things Your way.
Second, focusing on increasing a Christian trait is loving God because we will be thinking about new things not bad things.
Third, the type of pleasures I like may tend to lead to temptation. If I cut some of them out to focus on loving God, maybe I would have less temptation.
I have added the verse about being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God to the verses that I meditate on often.
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