Are Your Vices Keeping You From God’s Best?

Some weeks ago, my Pastor, Andre’ Butler, closed a series titled “Vices,” the last day of the series, the congregation was offered a piece of paper to put our vices on and tear it up and throw it into a box, symbolizing freedom from that iniquity. I didn’t take the paper initially, not because I have no vices, but because I didn’t think I had any other issues I hadn’t already talked to the Lord about. As I looked at the paper and whispered to the Lord Jesus, “What is my vice?” I heard self-effort!

Vices versus Jesus Dependence!

Writing self-effort on the paper, I realized that many of my past circumstances of attempting to control the outcome were, in effect, self-effort. Humbling! My thinking can only change by looking to Jesus. Self-help is an oxymoron. How can a person save themselves?

Curse is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength!

Jeremiah 17:5

While writing down the words self-effort, I began to think about the meaning beyond I can help myself! Reading the Law of Success by Napoleon Hill and his recommended reading “Observation-every Man’s University by Russell Herman Conwell,” I enjoyed the reading until Father God began to talk to me about the actions of the flesh. Self-effort is a fruit of the flesh, albeit sometimes it’s masked as well-meaning. But good deeds minus the Lord’s direction come with a burden of expectation of reward, whether personal recognition or monetary gain.  

Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

Galatian 3:3

Reaching the chapter on self-help in the book Observation is where all the instructions of the Holy Spirit began to help me see that self-help is man’s idea of making himself better. Only the One who created man can do that! Within each man is a God-shaped void, and no number of self-help searches will deliver him to where God made him to be.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made!

Psalm 139:14

God didn’t make man to be independent of Him. When the Lord God created man, He had fellowship with him in the Garden of Eden, where He supplied man with everything he needed and would visit him in the cool of the day (Genesis 2-3). Now, before man sinned, he wasn’t self-reliant! So how much more after man fell from grace!  

No Shortcomings With Jesus!

 In all, self-effort, self-help, and self-reliance is a man looking at himself through another man, unless that man is the Lord Jesus Christ! Only in Jesus is life more abundant (John 10:10), and He is our peace (Ephesians 2:14), and He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). The Lord Jesus Christ is what you are missing! 

Don’t know Jesus? He is a prayer away!

Pray,

Lord Jesus, thank you for loving and dying for me on the cross. Your precious blood washes me clean of every sin. You are my Lord and Savior, now and forever. I believe that Father God raised You from the dead and that You are alive today at the right hand of God. Because of Your finished work, I am now a beloved child of God, and heaven is my home. Thank You for giving me eternal life and filling my heart with peace and joy!

🙏🏽Amen🙏🏽