If I have this baby my life will be ruined

I have become convincingly dependent on God for everything. I say "convincingly" because I have never been so sure in my life that, apart from Christ, I am nothing more than a frail, continually sinful COWARD who can't even muster up one righteous thought. When I step out of the Spirit my life looks like a dog returning to its own vomit. Everything that used to be thrilling in this world is now devoid of any pleasure. It's simply the law of diminishing return. Every day that you wake up in a world where everything revolves around you, where the number one objective is your own happiness including the circumvention of people, places and things that could possibly abate that happiness; it takes a little more of the world everyday to feel as satisfied as you felt yesterday.

Pause and think about that...

Tomorrow you will need more happiness than you did yesterday to be satisfied. A year from now you will need 10 times more just to stave off depression. Its true isn't it? That's why lives that play out like this can get so dark in sin that they are unrecognizable. The definition of pleasure becomes so warped that you can't even distinguish it from atrocity. Think I'm being overly dramatic? How about this: "If I have this baby my life will be ruined." How many times do you think these words have been spewed over the past 30 days around the world? This is warped, especially if you rearrange the words just a hair to say, "If I murder this baby my life will be much more fun." I bet a year before this statement was ever uttered that the requirements for this persons happiness were deceivingly much cheaper (Assuming you view life as valuable). Self-love is a monster that's being sold to us as an answer.

Who can satisfy my soul like Jesus? This is actually true. Every other taste has become bland or bitter compared to what I've tasted at my Fathers table. Things that used to melt in my mouth like, success, money, praise, comfort or even something like piety, have all become dirty rags compared to what is in His cup. Christ offers us the law of cumulative return, or in other words the old snowball effect. Every day that you wake up in a world where everything revolves Christ, where the number one objective is the happiness of others including the intentional sharing of the burdens of the lowest in our world; it takes a little less everyday to feel completley satisfied. Paul said that he discovered how to have joy even through SUFFERING. That's what I'm talking about. It can make the greatest mountain of pain suddenly hopeful and the smallest provision seem like your cup is over flowing. Heidi Baker, an astonishing missionary in Africa, said that God gave her a vision that Western Christians where living off the crumbs from the Masters table, missing the feast that was happening right in front of them. How devastating is that to hear?! C'mon! We are eating Ramen off the ground in order to hang onto what?! Our money? Our autonomy? Our finley tuned plans? Our HAPPINESS? These are the things that keep us underneath the table in the sty. Self-love, Self-preservation, Self-reliance = Self-Centeredness.

I pray that we can get off the ground and take our seat back at our Fathers table.