Venerating Vanity

You need to find joy in the right things. When we mind earthly things, instead of minding the same things as those maturing in Christ, we have our own agenda, the same as the world’s, the same as we were before we supposedly forsook all for Christ.

Where do your passions lie? If I have joy in God I can wait on His plan and timing. Joy is patient, and impatience is pride. Pride leads to lust, which says I deserve it now, or why do I have to wait, or why do I have to deal with this situation, or why am I here? Lust is “I want it my way and in my time, and that time is now”. It wants to go outside God's guidelines to find satisfaction.

Paul says these persons who are like this are enemies and their desire is to find joy in whatever way they deem necessary. They will not mature and they will do it the way they want to. They will not follow others as a pattern, and they think they know better, but they are wrong. They think they have found easy street, a better way, a Christian life and afterlife without a true Christian testimony. They might think they are covered by Christ's blood, but they are only filling their veins with the virus of vanity.