Are you tempted beyond your ability to resist?

We come into the world relentlessly narcissistic, resisting the kind of rigorous self-examination that reveals what is ugly in us and what is our impact on others. Too often, we live with our felt well-being as our priority concern, and so we continue, incurably addicted to ourselves and powerless to resist whatever temptations promise the sense of instant happiness we seek.

The result includes addictions to:

• Drugs, legal or illegal
• Food, its compulsive consumption
• Sex, both legitimate, illegitimate, and perverted expressions
• Money, to the pleasures and convenience and power money can buy
• Influence, self-satisfying, difference-making pleasure
• Recognition, respect that provides personal significance
• And dozens of addictions to other sources of satisfaction that desperate souls crave.

Could heaven possibly matter to my life now?

There is no question that addictions soil our souls, eventually taking control of our lives. The energy and motivation needed to serve the cause of Christ gets badly short-changed. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news.

Biblical Christianity provides a way to rise up from this quicksand: waiting! Learning to eagerly wait for the Lord’s return is essential to overcoming the root demand beneath all addictions. But the choice to wait is easy to state but hard to make because arranging for a temporary and counterfeit experience quiets the demand of our tired and thirsty souls. While there is no path to walk that eliminates the struggle to resist temptation, we can be moving into greater freedom from it every day.

As we learn to wait eagerly for heaven when all our longings will be fully and forever satisfied, we will be inclined to live for one central reason: to make this life work as we want it to.

Two things will then happen:

• One, we will find ourselves driven by self-centeredness and by an addictive concern for our own felt well-being.
• Two, whatever either numbs our discontent with things as they are or provides a convincing sense of satisfaction for our deeply felt longings will lead us toward addictions of any available variety, all fueled by a core addiction to self.

Waiting for heaven to provide everything our souls yearn for and demanding nothing now frees us to love well now, to delight God, and to be there for others, requiring nothing in return.

The result? Joy! The satisfaction of living and loving like Jesus.