And in This Corner (eBook)

A Thought Provoking Journey Into a Spirtual Main Event!

Jason Mansur (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
210 Seiten
Yorkshire Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-942451-25-9 (ISBN)

In a world of photoshop, 'reality tv', ghost writers, and content editors, do you ever wonder if anything you read or see is authentic anymore? Authenticity scares many people. Nobody's perfect and yet often times that's just what many of us pretend to be. Why? Why do we fear being different? In this book we'll delve into some very personal and authentic waters of spiritual contemplation written with a fight night theme. The photos are real, the content real, and the heart is real. Just as real and unpredictable as the ring of combat, this book offers an unpredictable and uncut look directly into some places many would fear to explore. It's going to be fun! Will you join me in a spiritual journey down a thought provoking highway towards a destination of reconciliation? If we choose to see God in everything, we will in turn see the good in it!

In a world of photoshop, "e;reality tv"e;, ghost writers, and content editors, do you ever wonder if anything you read or see is authentic anymore? Authenticity scares many people. Nobody's perfect and yet often times that's just what many of us pretend to be. Why? Why do we fear being different? In this book we'll delve into some very personal and authentic waters of spiritual contemplation written with a fight night theme. The photos are real, the content real, and the heart is real. Just as real and unpredictable as the ring of combat, this book offers an unpredictable and uncut look directly into some places many would fear to explore. It's going to be fun! Will you join me in a spiritual journey down a thought provoking highway towards a destination of reconciliation? If we choose to see God in everything, we will in turn see the good in it!

Love vs Lust

INTRODUCTION:

Up next is the slightly less anticipated battle between two likely rivals. These next two opponents are so closely matched that in the chaos of the fight, it can be hard to tell the two apart. This is likely to be a fight that will go the distance. Up first from the blue corner is Love who has the slight upper hand when it comes to experience. Out of the Red Corner comes lust with a “fresh out of the gates” energy. Without further ado…let’s get round one started. Ding, Ding.

As long as we are talking about lust and love, I thought I would start with one of the most difficult situations to face any couple. There is that one question that seems to come up time and time again with historically unpredictable results. Five little words can send shivers down any man’s spine. The following five words that seem to pop up out of nowhere and arranged in this exact order, should be avoided at all costs: “Do you think she’s pretty?”

Let me offer some advice with handling this risky situation. Ladies skip ahead to the underlined bold “Ladies” below, the following advice is classified. Jesus was really good at answering difficult questions by asking more questions and I think if anyone can get us out of this one, it’s Him. You see guys, this question doesn’t just pop out of nowhere. We bring this one on ourselves. However, an exit strategy is still required for casualties to be limited. Follow this script in an attempt to survive.

Your first response is always without a doubt, “Do I think who is pretty?” The whole idea here is to avoid the conversation and best case scenario, it ends here. Worst case scenario, it’s followed by, “Oh you know who,” with a slight tilt in her head and that piercing stare of death. At this point you are in a lose, lose situation. If you say no, you’ll probably get, “If you don’t think she’s pretty, then you must think I am really ugly.” Now you have hurt her feelings and you may have slightly told a “white lie.” But if you answer “yes,” well, I think you all know how that story will end. LOL! Ladies, don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to and guys, try to keep your eyes on the prize.

This is one of those situations where two people don’t agree on something and it’s okay. Men and women don’t always see eye to eye on things that we are internally wired to see differently. Sometimes we can adapt in order to manage the emotional response to the differences, but that doesn’t diminish the impact of the conflicting situation, opinion, or likewise on either party. The important piece lies in having an open honest relationship then quickly flagging the situation and coming to a mutual agreement on how to best handle it. It’s not just a man vs woman thing either. The more we study the differences in personalities and internal wiring of individuals, the more we realize just how different we really are.

I’ve battled personally and observed those close to me that struggled with the temptations of lust and the challenge of how to decipher it from love. I am sure I am not alone in stating how difficult it is to observe someone you love struggling to balance these powerful emotions and then have to watch from a distance as the carnage accumulates from its misinterpretation. I don’t quite understand why, but at times it would seem that many have thrown in the towel on even trying.

There is this destructive idea to, “Just do what makes you happy” or, “If it feels good, do it” or the worst one yet, “You only live once!” YOLO! What a ridiculous way to look at life or make decisions. You have to carry the consequences of your decisions the rest of your life and that life will never seem short enough, if that baggage is heavy. Self control is a fruit of the Spirit and learning to control your emotions in order to avoid that baggage is an important virtue.

It really is kind of a balancing act. A life lived too safely can lead to a faithless, boring, uninvolved flop. Risks are a part of life and taking them can lead to great rewards. We serve a big thinking God, but His desire isn’t for us to take unhealthy risks by jumping into things with no eternal value. Taking risks on investments is a better way to look at it. In the financial world you have assets and liabilities. One generally gets more valuable with time and the other most certainly loses value. For example, from a personal standpoint, a home would be a financial asset and a car a liability. Risks are meant for use on those things that have the potential to increase in value.

Faith should play a major role in our lives. Taking a risk on an eternal investment is having faith. We have faith that the Holy Spirit will prepare the soil in which we will then have the opportunity to plant seeds. We also have to have the faith that He will lead us to the right place at the right time and that He will grow the seeds after they are planted. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and walk up to a stranger and offer to help, or jump into a business deal, or leave a business deal in search of something better. Sometimes having faith involves cutting out certain friends or influences that are negative with hope that better ones will be made available. Leave a place of comfort into a place of uncertainty and risk.

That’s where “life is short, take the risk” has warrant and “life is long, play it safe,” takes the back seat. It’s not always easy to decipher between things that either build spiritual assets or spiritual liabilities, so it’s critical to be in tune with God. Lust is a sneaky liability promising instant returns with the false sense of a huge reward, yet your return will be dismal and risk undeniably great. We need the Holy Spirit to renew our minds daily in order to clear out the influence that lust has tainted us with.

Lust can put love at a disadvantage in the sense that it comes out of the gate with vengeance. It comes on fast and strong, unlike love that usually has a way of growing slowly over time, finishing stronger in later rounds. In rare cases, a person may lust after another and that lust transforms into love. This leads one to believe that it was “love at first sight.” The chances of that happening are pretty slim to say the least.

Lust may have been the gasoline that started the fire, but love is the wood that keeps it burning. Just like actual gasoline, you can get burned real fast, if you are not careful in handling it. With today’s instant gratification mindset, it’s no wonder why so many are giving into it. Now I know, I am going against everything that Hollywood would have you to believe. But love at first sight really is just lust at first sight hoping love will soon follow. Love isn’t something that just happens in an instant. It takes time. That’s why the old saying, “Blood is thicker than water” is used with regards to the strength of family relationships. Growing up together makes for a strong bond that isn’t easily broken.

No one can love someone or something that they don’t know. Getting to KNOW someone takes time. It takes countless hours of conversation, observation, and involvement. Remember our discussion on relationships in the last chapter? Relationships can start with knowing about someone, but never reach an actual relationship until you get to really know someone through personal interaction. That means them getting to know you as much as you getting to know them. The personal interaction I am talking about is void of sex and the lustful influences associated with it. Sex has a way of filtering everything we see, hear, or feel about someone, making it very challenging to build a sincere foundation of trust.

Lust is an emotion that drives us towards something we think we want, but is merely an imaginary connection with nothing more than selfish desire, an idea, or a fantasy. Many decisions based on emotions put us in a place we have to dig out of. Emotions don’t always have your best interest at heart and it’s not just for physical desires that lust can rear its ugly head. We can find ourselves lusting after many things like possessions, money, power, pornography, or even knowledge. For the sake of this book, we’ll talk mostly about lust in the sexual sense of the word in regards to relationships. An entire book could be written, all on its own, in regards to the destruction of envious lust towards inanimate objects and the like.

Paul warns us in 1 Cor 6:18 that no sin affects the body the way sexual sin does. When you engage sexually with another person you become “one” in body and spirit. It’s a physical and spiritual sin against not only yourself, but the other person involved. For this reason, the consequences of sexual sin can have a catastrophic effect. If the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and sexual sin is a sin against that temple, then isn’t sexual sin also sin against the Holy Spirit? When you give yourself to the Lord, you are no longer your own. You belong to Him as much as when you give yourself to someone in marriage. They are one in the same. You become one in body and spirit. Hmmmmmm? Why then did Jesus say there is no marriage in heaven, if we become one spiritually in marriage? Another day, another discussion. Moving on.

Love has been around since before the...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	26.1.2016
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-942451-25-3 / 1942451253
ISBN-13	978-1-942451-25-9 / 9781942451259

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