#1933 Happy Hour

#1933

Happy Hour

Today's Puritan Devotional:

Spurgeon's Morning by Morning, January 20

How would you judge the lawfulness or unlawfulness of any pleasure?

(Susanna Wesley)

"All things are lawful for me--but not all things are profitable.
 All things are lawful for me--but I will not be mastered by anything." 1 Corinthians 6:12

How would you judge the lawfulness or unlawfulness of any pleasure?

Use this rule: Whatever . . . 
  weakens your reason,
  impairs the tenderness of your conscience,
  obscures your sense of God,
  takes off your relish for spiritual things--
that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.

By this test you may detect evil, no matter how subtly or how plausibly temptation may be presented to you.

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do--do it all for the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31 

  ~  ~  ~  ~

You may want to read J.R. Miller's practical short article on the same topic, "AMUSEMENTS".

Addition Dr. Morris:

How any sane person can read the inerrant holy word of God and not be changed is beyond my comprehension.  The Bible, which is called "The Book", is the word of God...the Creator of the universe actually writing down instructions for life and living, using inspired men of His choosing.  Charles Shelton wrote the book, "What Would Jesus Do?"  It is all so simple, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do--do it all for the glory of God."  (1 Corinthians 10:31)  It takes many years for we "mere mortals" to comprehend.  We live in a world of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  Even children from Christian homes are encouraged to seek popularity among unbelievers.  It took two times of marriage with this writer to fully understand that God was serious, that he meant business when he said not to be yoked with unbelievers. 

It has taken me many years to realize that every man cannot be called my brother...even those at the church house.  I am very careful about whom I call brother; it has become very popular among the "in-crowd" to call one another "bro".  I have male blood relatives that I cannot call brother because they have never shown that they have my values as a brother.

There is a new form of tribalism in our world today, replacing the time when men were "brothers in Christ" at the church house, "brothers in some sort of mission" at the fraternal hall (Masons, Moose, Elks, etc), "brothers of some sort in do-gooding" at a civic club (Rotary, Kiwanis, Lyons, etc).  The new fraternal culture is that found in the pool hall or private club where drinking alcohol-swearing-lewd jokes are acceptable to all. 

When I was in college, I would walk by the Greek letter fraternity houses where those elitist frat boys had a constant party and just conjured within my mind what fraternities have to do with higher education.  Then, after having graduated following eight years of university professional education, a poor boy almost starving to death trying to get through-working at night and going to school during the day, never any time for any type social activity, I learned what it was all about.  A fellow medical officer, fellow staff member at an Army hospital asked me to accompany him to an Alabama football game at Tuscaloosa.  Of course, he had been one of the elitist (his father a doctor) and so he took me to his old fraternity house for lunch, and there is was, I finally knew what it was like to be a "fraternity man".  Present and former frat boys "good ol' southern boys" were there for the game.  In the frat house, black butlers were catering to their every whim, putting out great trays of food on buffet tables in the dining rooms: even remembering their names, bowing and scraping, calling them "mister" or in the case of my friend "doctor".

God never promised any of his followers pleasure, he promised us a hard time..our pleasure will come later.