"See the young man sittin' in the old man's bar, waitin' for his turn to die."

"See the young man sittin' in the old man's bar, waitin' for his turn to die." That's a line from the Goo Goo Dolls' song, "Broadway," and I think it's ultimately tragic, because it's ultimately true. Millions and millions are living their lives with just one ultimate goal: death, decay; dust. It is sadly true when God says,

"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun." (Eccl 9:5-6)

As Christians, we need to see the plight of those who, though they are sad for the moment in grief over a lost loved one, or happy drinking and partying with friends, are really simply waiting for their turn to die. We need to get out of our comfort zones and show them the spiritual reality behind this physical facade because, "the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Cor 1:18)

Your friends make a difference.

Your friends really do make a difference.  "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm." (Pro 13:20)

I used to work 911 and was assigned the weekend shift to deal with the wild nights at the bars. It was very easy to witness the harm that people shared among themselves, from lasting sexual diseases to death. Some things don't change, but you can change who your friends are, and what habits you have. 

Addicted to the World?

My study on spiritual addiction to the world turned into a study on Light, and what it can be to wander in the darkness. As such, here's an updated version. It's mostly for me, and I'll keep studying it, but it needs a place for me to easily access it online.


BQ: What would you think of a former addict who said, "You know what...I think that I can have just one sip/hit/look and call it good?" Probably not very smart, huh?

When we are baptized, we can say that we are crucified with Christ, and our sins and desires with it, yet we often have a period of time to unlearn our bad habits.  As Christians, it can be tempting to return to worldly behavior, yet when we do, we often find ourselves lamenting, saying, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24)  

Don't be the addict who decides to go back for another sip. Be free from the body of death. 




 

BQ: HAPPY NEW YEAR! :)

How are you going to improve your spiritual health this year? On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you? How can you improve? I have a suggestion that helped me a lot. 

Often, when we're spiritually weak, we tend to stick with those who are spiritually weak as well, or who are not spiritual at all. There we do not risk being looked down on, but instead are "loved" for our bad behavior.  

Why is this so?  Because, "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."  When we struggle with the old addict, we struggle wanting to keep our old deeds, and not have them exposed, so we keep bad friends, and not only cannot help them, but cannot help ourselves! We're stuck in the mud!

I encourage anyone who is not at the height of spiritual health to make a change of friends. Start now. Replace those who keep you spiritually in the grave with those who will raise you up, and remember that, "he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3:20-21)

BQ: Happy New Years! Again!

When we're addicted to the desires of the flesh, we can struggle with leaving our worldly friends.  It can be very tempting to "stay out of the spiritual high-beams."

Have you ever been on an airline flight and had the safety announcement say to put on your oxygen mask before anyone else's? If we want to help others, we first need to save and strengthen ourselves—or we risk losing ourselves, and our friends who are trapped in the world.

Don't be afraid of some spiritual high-beams. Light burns away the fog of sin, and repels the darkness. Embrace your family in Christ first, and leave the old behind. Walk into the light because, "Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life."  (Jn 8:12)



 

BQ: I once had a friend who admitted to having some great spiritual struggles with being unable to break away from the world.  This friend expressed a great desire to "stay out of the spiritual high-beams." Think about how striking those words are. High-beams are used...in the darkness.

 What was being expressed was actually a desire to avoid walking in Light. We MUST remember that, "Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life."  (Jn 8:12)

Don't avoid spiritual light, but rather leave addiction, darkness, and death behind by taking all the Light we can get! 



 

BQ: When we seek to stay out of the spiritual headlights, we don't want our worldly behaviors exposed, and so we start sliding away from our Christian family and turning to worldly friends for companionship.  God addresses this human habit and says, 

"But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says,

“Awake, sleeper,

And arise from the dead,

And Christ will shine on you.” (Eph 5:13-14)

It can be embarrassing to have our behavior brought to light...but we need to seek that help.  Yes, it makes it all visible, but it causes us to wake up, come to our senses, and rise from fleshly death to a wonderful life with Christ. Go to your spiritual family and grow; let go of the world.

BQ: If we give in to spiritual addiction to the world, we end up being partakers with the world and its darkness rather than ambassadors of light to it. We must be lights, not darkness:

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light."

Notice the warning here to keep our light shining bright. There is no provision to sometimes hide it. As Christians, we can't let ourselves sometimes go out and get drunk at the bar with our friends! We can't pick some person we "love" and sleep around with him/her. When we do that, we embrace spiritual death and darkness for ourselves and our "friends."

BQ: I once knew a man who was addicted to the world, always going to the bars with friends and always drinking.  This friend engaged in a lot of bad behavior but told me, "My friends aren't Christians, but when we go out I convey Christ to them in a big-picture manner."

I was heartbroken for this person, as the symptoms of Luke 11:34-35 were present,

"Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.  Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness!"  

As Christians, we cannot partake in the activities of the world. It is incompatible with life in the Light. When we do, we delude ourselves into thinking that we are full of light, but the light in us becomes darkness. The last time I ever spoke to my old friend, he was no longer assembling. Though always in my prayers, it is a tale of the greatest sadness for me. Be careful! 

BQ: Yesterday we saw an example of a person who was convinced that he was "spreading the light" while out engaging in dark deeds of the flesh to fuel his addiction for the world. God warns us of this delusion, saying,

"If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth," and that, "they are blind guides of the blind, and if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."  (1 John 1:6; Mt 15:14)

This man was convinced that he was spreading the light of Christ, but was engaged in the darkness. While in the darkness, we are blind and cannot see, and we stray from Christ's path, and those we take with us, too. There is nothing sadder.





 

BQ: When we become spiritually addicted to the world, wanting to avoid the light, which can burn painfully, can become a deadly byproduct which can speed up spiritual decay.  This sort of pain is something that we have to go through, and Daniel 12:20 has a prophecy of Christians noting just that, saying,

"Many will be purged, purified and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand."

Refining, as referenced of silver and metal, is done in a bright, hot fire. That process isn't fun,but it is purifying—yet if we embrace the world, we don't understand that. Pursue a new world and refinement, not an old one of sin and death. 
 

BQ: Christians sometimes return to the world, and the addictions of the flesh, but not by simply jumping whole-hog back into sin. Usually it starts with a few small, fun desires of the flesh, and an hunger for the world instead of a "hunger and thirst for righteousness." (Mt 5:6)

It is this sort of behavior that leads God to warn us, "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." (Rom 7:24)  

If you think that you can have just a tiny sip of an old appetite for the flesh, you're thinking to highly of yourself, because Satan plans everything to draw you back in.


 

BQ: God warns us not to think too highly of ourselves, and to use sober judgment. Often a Christian's sliding back into the world begins with hanging out with bad friends, and thinking very highly of our abilities to withstand the onslaught of worldly pleasure. But God warns us, "Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals." (1 Cor 15:33)

I've seen many Christians hang out with partiers, which slowly leads them to party, and then they begin assembling more with people of the world and partaking of worldly things than fulfilling the great commission. 

We must be extra careful that we do not become those who "know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Rom 1:32) 







BQ: Romans 1:32 warns us not to become those who encourage and engage in fleshly destruction. I watched this happen to one Christian  man who liked the bars, as I've mentioned.  As a refresher, he'd been immersed and growing, but he went back to his non-Christian girlfriend and partying.

This man had liked to drink, and so when he was with her, he'd drink a little to keep things "socially lubed." This slowly led to him going to the bars every now and then with their old friends, and from their, to missing assembly every now and then.

Eventually, he no longer assembled at all. Remember how bad company corrupts good morals? Remember how God says to use sober judgement and not to think too highly of ourselves? My friend didn't heed those warnings, and became a man who both engaged in worldly behavior and encouraged it, and so became one with the world.  We have to be very careful to not let those old desires come back.






BQ:  We simply CANNOT compromise with sin. We cannot decide to go "partying just once." We can't compromise with what is essence addiction. Like an addict who goes back, we can be those who

"after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first." (2 Pet 2:20)

Don't mess with the old addictions. Don't compromise. Kick that slave to sing and death out. Keep him dead, period. 






BQ: The zombie apocalypse is always something to see when it's in a movie. Yet when we're addicted to sin and start hanging out with the world, we rarely think of zombies, but instead think of the happiness and "fun" that occurs when we engage in the desires of our flesh. 

What we should see, instead of people happily getting totally wasted, is the true, invisible, spiritual state of these lost individuals. Zechariah says of the lost, "their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth." (Zech 14;12)

It'd be a lot harder for us to go back to that rotten life of sin and death if we saw spiritual reality as it is—not pretty at all. 







BQ: Spiritual addictions are more easily concealed, which makes them doubly deadly, and there can be a time where we go too far down the rabbit hole to recover. Hebrews 6:4-6 warns us about this, saying, 

"For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit,  and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,  and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame."

Don't risk delving too deep. Don't delve back into the grave looking for the old man at all, in fact. Leave him dead and buried.

Bottoms up!

BQ: According to the CDC, "Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion."  

That's a pretty staggering bunch of numbers to see! When I worked in EMS, it was always my lot to get the weekend night shifts, which meant dealing with lots of carnage from alcohol. God long ago noted the same thing, using Is 5:11-13 to describe an ancient party scene:  

"Woe to those who...stay up late in the evening that wine may inflame them! Their banquets are accompanied by lyre and harp, by tambourine and flute, and by wine; But they do not pay attention to the deeds of the Lord, Nor do they consider the work of His hands."  

Often people wait until night to start getting really wasted, and it's no surprise—alcohol degrades our ability to function. More important, though, is that alcohol in excess limits our connection to our Lord. If we want to be like Christ, we have to back away from drunkenness.

BQ: Isaiah mentioned an ancient scene of nighttime drunkenness, and it's pretty revealing that often drunkenness, theft, and other such degradation of the human condition occurs at night. I like how Romans 13:13 hints at this, saying, "Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy."

Often people are simply more apt to behave horribly at night. Why? Because darkness usually conceals the evil, at least in the minds of men. It's better to behave properly, as we would behave if we had an audience observing us in broad daylight! Always be upright.  

BQ: Rock Springs, WY was a hive of scum and villainy at times, at least for those of us working the late-night 911 shifts. One thing interesting about alcohol abuse is that it's often associated with sexual misconduct, too. This isn't anything new, and God noted in Habakkuk 2:15, 

"Woe to you who make your neighbors drink,

Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk

So as to look on their nakedness!"

Rock Springs featured a lot worse than that, but it was true that evil hasn't really changed. I saw a lot of rapes take place, to both men and women, that could only occur because of immersion in a really wretched culture. It's a good thing to stay away from places that feature the likes of what Habakkuk mentions, and worse. 

BQ: Peer pressure is a nasty, nasty thing, and one that we often convince ourselves that we're not susceptible to. What does God say about it? The most concise thing that I've found is Proverbs 1:10, which says, "if sinners entice you, do not consent."

It's really easy to be enticed to sin, and it's often an insidious, dark road to go down, without signposts to warn you how far you've gone. 2 Pet 1:5-7 has the entire way to counter this. Take a look at this full armor against peer pressure:

"Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge,  and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,  and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love." 

Notice the compounding nature of what's being mentioned, and look right in the middle at what's featured: self-control. If we give in to peer pressure, we're letting others control us. To fight against peer pressure, start off with diligence, faith, and moral excellence, and build on that foundation.

BQ: I'm still getting around to posting some older BQs, so these are somewhat linear. :) Alcohol and going to the bars is incredibly prevalent and accepted in American society, but does God want it to be a part of Christian culture? That's rhetorical, but let's consider some reasons why.  

Alcohol, and especially bars, have been called a "meat market" by some. It lowers our inhibitions and puts us in contact with people who are doing the same; it destroys our judgment and can alter our lives forever. In Gen 19, Lot would never have committed incest if he had not been drunk, yet because he was wasted, he did, "and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose." 

While all sin is sin, some sins can carry more permanent physical consequences. Sexual misconduct associated with alcohol and social drinking can wreck a person for a lifetime; when accompanied with driving, it can take innocent lives as well.

BQ: We've seen that alcohol perverts judgment, but Satan's done a lot of work to make it seem like a normal part of life, even to Christians—surely hanging out a bar and drinking a bit doesn't really hurt anyone, right?   One thing that's being missed is what God says that alcohol does to your heart (that is, the core of your very being). 

Proverbs 23:33 says, "Your eyes will see strange things, And your heart will utter perverse things." Sometimes we try to write off drinking as "not that bad," but the fact is, it utterly destroys people from the inside out; it perverts the heart first and destroys from there. I know one man who doesn't drink, but goes to the bars. I asked him why and he said (paraphrased), "Because it's easier to take women that way, and you can take whatever woman you want, especially if you're not toasted and she is." He went on to tell me, "Those type of girls are good for a "cuddle," but aren't made to be wives, alcohol ruins them."  The sad thing is, alcohol can so ruin a person that not even a well-collected scuzzbucket wants anything to do with him or her. As Christians, we need to avoid perversion of the heart, and that means we need to avoid the alcohol scene. 

BQ: We saw that alcohol causes the heart to become perverted, and that's really not uncommon knowledge. People drink and drive, killing people and/or themselves, spend away all their money, and ruin marriages and relationships, all for another drink. When you meet someone who likes alcohol, it can be a horrific struggle for him or her to overcome. Often, they're dependent on it.

God warns us to be "not given to wine," in 1 Tim 3:3, yet for someone who likes their booze, they often wake up to say, "I will seek it again." (Pro 23:35) 

BQ:  Proverbs 23:35 says those who drinking steadily say, "When shall I awake, that I may seek another drink?”  Without alcohol, a core part of their lives are gone. What's wrong, though, with seeking a drink?

The problem is in what they're seeking. A song says, "Savior, in my joy or sorrow, I will ever go to Thee," and this sentiment is reflected in Phil 4:11-13 and several other passages of scripture. Compare that with someone who really enjoys alcohol. When they get off work, they go to the bottle instead of the Bible. In sadness they may seek a bar instead of their Christian family. If they want to be joyful, they may head out to party or bonfire with plenrt of beer instead of going to spiritually build someone up. The entire core of the heart gains a slight perversion as Proverbs 23:33 mentions, like water with oil on top.

BQ: Ultimately, alcohol destroys lives, marriages, and the heart.  God sums up his opinion on recreational drug use (and alcohol is a potent drug) by saying, "Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober." (1 Thess 5:6) We're in an army, and the devil is prowling about. If we're hooked on booze, we're easy prey.

If you have a chance to go out to a bar, think of something which will build Christ's body up instead. If you have a chance to get wasted in your own home, call a brother or sister and do something else. Have a Bible study, go appreciate the world God has created, or do something else productive. No matter what, though, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." 1 Pet 5:8