"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"
Jesus tells us that there is a place of purity of soul that allows one to perceive the activity and movement of God. This is a true blessing.
Most people fail to see God, even when He is acting all around them.
There is so much soul pain in our world because we keep pushing poison into the inner part of who we are. We damage our souls when we violate God's moral standards. Think through the Ten Commandments from a different point of view. These are not God trying to restrict your pursuit of fun and pleasure. It is God waving us off those areas that He knows are poison to our soul. He knows that other spiritual powers exist claiming to be worthy of worship; but they will poison your soul if you worship them, so he restricts the worship of these false gods. He knows that trying to think of God in three-dimensional terms will poison our ability to let God be God in our life, so He declares idols and any three-dimensional rendering of God out of bounds. God is beyond and above our dimensional categories. Any rendering of Him limits our soul’s ability to perceive Him. He knows that there is a huge connection between the words we use and our inner life, so he restricts swearing, cursing, and insincere use of His name.
It poisons our soul. We also, in this regard, poison our soul when we are hypocrites and live lives that are opposite of our proclamation of allegiance to God and Christ. That is why the third commandment outlaws the taking of the name of God in vain. The fourth commandment, in its broadest terms, seeks to keep us from being self-focused in our use of the life God has given us. If we are to avoid the soul pain of a life out of biblical priority and balance, we must stop at least once a week and acknowledge God and His supremacy. I have listened to dozens of people who have lived for themselves and ignored God and have reaped the whirlwind in their families, in their finances, in their careers, and other areas. Yes, God would make you slow down and re-center your life on Him to keep you from destroying yourself with the endless pursuit of all you want. God also tells us there is soul pain waiting on the other side of rebellion. Rebellion seems like the right thing to do, but it rarely is. Rebellion from God-given authorities who are holding up God's laws is always a way of stabbing yourself in your soul. God also proclaims the way of violence is a way of poison for your soul. You don't have to actually murder someone to violate this command and swim in a toxic sludge of poison for your soul. He tell us not to steal for the same reason; it gums up your soul with poison. He says not to bear false witness against your neighbor because deceiving and lying to friends and loved ones is its own injectable poison.
Finally He says don't scheme to get the blessing that someone else has. This form of greediness, though unacted upon, is another kind of poison. Therefore see Jesus’ words not as a declaration against fun but as a warning against drinking poison willingly. These forms of poison may not kill the body, but they do a brutal number on the soul.
The one thing that must be remembered in all this is that everyone's soul is dirty and must be cleansed. The only cleanser or antidote for the poisons that are already in our souls is the death of Christ in our place. We all need Jesus for what we have already done -- let alone the things we are tempted to do.
If you have not asked Jesus Christ to be your savior, then do it now. Do not try and pretend you are righteous and/or pure enough that you can see God on your own. You are not.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz