My husband took me out for dinner last night. This is something we don’t do very often and only at selected places that can accommodate my food issues. While we were waiting for our order I had a conversation with the waitress about why I cannot drink coffee.
My children can and so each time I open a tin of coffee I smell the aroma and oh it smells so good. The trouble is that if I was to actually drink a cup of coffee I wouldn’t feel so good.
With these thoughts came thoughts about how so many of our advertisers work on the principle of “if it feels good, do it”. The hope is that people will buy in order to make themselves feel good. Then when that doesn’t work they will continue to buy more and more things, looking for that good feeling.
It is very common to take the easy way out. If the coffee didn’t actually make me very sick, there is no way I would be able to resist the temptation to drink some. I won’t reveal how many cups of coffee a day I used to drink but it was a lot.
Resisting temptation is sometimes made easier by being afraid of the consequences but in these days of “the feel good” approach too many people are not afraid of them and are even willing to deal with them.
Sooner or later we will have to deal with them anyway. As we read in Revelation 20:15 “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” This isn’t just about resisting temptation of course but also about failing to take God at His word that if we ignore the sacrifice of Jesus there will be consequences.