DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS
There’s a casino here in Las Vegas
we lovingly and cynically call the “sex hotel.” The young guys come in with
hunger and expectation. I watched one guy in a restaurant start flirting with a
waitress in a way that he fully expected her to take him in the back room for
sex right there on the spot. It was kind of humorous, but sad too. The
billboards advertise sex, so the guys come in expecting to get it, but it’s a
phantom. They can look all around the main floor of the casino and restaurants
and be sorely disappointed. They’re trapped by visions of their imaginations.
Dangerous illusions end up in dangerous and destructive behaviors. Phantoms
present themselves in all categories of life. I had my own phantom about a
vacation.
My ideal vacation was a memory from
my younger years—having a great time camping, fishing, and floating down the
rapids on an air mattress. The image was pulling at me so much that I was
getting really uptight, especially since everything I was planning, failed.
What started as a simple desire, turned into lust and idolatry.
Lust, because I became obsessed
with it; idolatry because I’d elevated the idea of a perfect vacation above
almost everything else. When I realized this, I looked up the word idolatry and
found that an idol is defined as a phantom. I told myself I had to let the
phantom image go. Previous vacations with my family are great memories, but I
couldn’t continue chasing ghosts.
Chasing phantoms doesn’t deliver
the results we expect or want. The Bible calls it “vanity.” “Walk not as other
Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind” (Eph. 4:17). “Let him not
trust in emptiness, deceiving himself; For emptiness will be his reward” (Job
15:31).
I was caught up in chasing the
illusion—an emotional feeling I wanted from the perfect vacation. It was making
me miserable and I didn’t want it to happen again. Being obsessed by this
phantom made me act and feel like I was in a vise grip.
The dictionary defines a vise as
“that which winds, consisting of two jaws opened and closed by a screw, to hold
or squeeze with.” That’s exactly how I felt. The vacation mirage had me in its
jaws and was squeezing. I felt pressurized and unsatisfied. The word “vise” can
also be spelled “vice.” I realized that a v-i-c-e (defined as a fault
or harmful habit) works the same way as a v-i-s-e with people’s minds. The vice
gets a grip on the mind and it won’t let go.
God tells us He wants us to be
free. Paul tells the Galatians: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage”
(Gal. 5:1). A yoke is like a vise grip that keeps us from the freedom that
comes with Christ and walking by the Spirit. The yoke that binds us is often
merely a false image we’ve somehow believed.
The world is full of phantoms, and
we’ve been bombarded with them since we were young—things we were led to
believe were okay for us to seek and seize. They were presented to us through
all kinds of media including books, magazines, TV, the internet, religion, our
parents, teachers, peers, our cultural and ethnic backgrounds, to name a few of
the sources of these phantoms. We have even combined what these sources put
out, and developed our own versions of certain ideas, or pictures of how we
think we’d really like things to be.
My dream was of a specific
vacation I was idolizing and obsessing over. Another example comes from when I
was twenty-one. I had the idea of having twelve kids. I figured since I really
liked teaching Sunday School classes with lots of kids, I would love having
twelve of my own. But that was my imagined scenario, and I
didn’t check it out with the Lord. I also dreamed of being married by the age
of twenty-five and I felt devastated when that didn’t happen.
One of my friends used to envision
herself having one perfect job—one that she would absolutely love, and she
would do it all her life. Women and men fantasize about their idea of their
perfect mate and possibly miss the best one—the one God sends. People get an
idea of what they see as their perfect family setup, then end up as a single
parent, step-mom or a step-dad, and feel that their dreams have been forever
shattered, and they have a hard time coping with the reality of the new family
they’ve been given.
I’m sure all of us have had dreams
we thought were our own, but sometimes those visions of what we think we
want, come not from God, but from the world, and if we continue to pursue those
things, our actions can turn very un-Christ-like. Paul says: “I warn you
beforehand, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”
(Gal. 5:21 AMP). Up until now, I never really understood that verse, but now I
get it.
When we are chasing phantoms we
can’t be at the same time enjoying the inheritance of God’s way. Paul doesn’t
say if you get trapped by the world’s delusions you’re not going to heaven,
you’re a horrible person and doomed forever. Yes, you are definitely doomed
now, as long as you continue to seek the illusions, because those things put a
yoke on you and they can be tremendously oppressive, and they will never really
satisfy. But in contrast to seeking empty illusions, we have another
choice.
We can choose the sure promises of
God—promises that always deliver. When we have an image in our minds or hearts
we can ask God for revelation about it: is it from God, or is it from another
source? True visions come from God, not only from His written word, but they
are also communicated to us through His Spirit which we have within us. As we
endeavor to seek Him and His will for our lives in all our dreams, desires and
hopes, He will not fail us.
By the way, that vacation I
wanted—when I went to God and asked Him, He lined one up that was entirely
different from what I’d imagined and it was the best vacation ever! And concerning
the young guys who come to the sex hotel, I pray they wake up to God instead of
some stranger.
Love, Carolyn
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