How To Be Miserable

This article is addressed to people who want more misery in their lives.  I am providing several tips that are guaranteed to bring misery in your life.  In the spirit of gender equality, these tips work equally well on male and female.

Tips:

  • Get Bored with Life

  • Don’t Forgive

  • Walk by Sight, not by Faith

  • Replace Christian Religion with Politics

  • Don’t Study the Bible

  • Follow False Christs

  • Cultivate Rebellion in your Life

  • Eliminate Distinctions From Your Worldview

 Get Bored

Each of us have had the experience of asking the question “God, are you there?  Do you care about my life?” 

If we come up with the wrong answer to this question, it will send our life into a tailspin.  We will conclude that God is unconcerned about us, a preoccupied Deity with divine cold shoulders.  That makes us miserable.

Some people are bored because they are boring.  They are the epitome of the French word ennui.  Ennui occurs when life has lost its flavor, its zest.  This is not God’s will for your life, friend (John 10:10).

Some people are bored because they are working hard at being victims.  This makes you the smallest package in the world—a person wrapped up in themselves.  You can’t help anyone if you are a victim.

So look around you friend, people are drowning, struggling, longing to be loved, understood and encouraged.  A ministry will make your life meaningful.  You will be become un-bored, as you reach out to others.  Christ will walk beside you with His friendly hand on your shoulder.  Life will take on new meaning.

“Bear ye one another’s burden’s, and so fulfill the Law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

Don’t Forgive

I’m real offended, big mad, and super grumpy!  Somebody owes me an apology and I am going to sit down here under this vine and marinate in my own bitterness (Jonah 4).  For me to live is revenge, and to die is to validate my irritation.

So, do I have to forgive?

No.  It’s your choice.  But, if we don’t, we will experience three consequences.

  • The first consequence of unresolved bitterness is we will defile the majority of people around us (Hebrews 12:15).  How many bitter people does it take to get anger flowing through a church body?  Just one.

  • The second consequence of unresolved bitterness is that it becomes a pathway that leads to greater and more serious problems in your heart (Proverbs 14:10).

  • The third consequence of unresolved bitterness is that it will close a person’s heart to God.  Like all spiritual sin when it is allowed to remain in the heart it becomes a mighty padlock that locks your heart to God and other people.  That’s great, if you would like more misery in your life.

Unresolved bitter envy caused the demise of Israel’s first King, remember?  It also leads to ungratefulness.  That will keep you out of heaven.  Huh?  Are you sure??  Yes.

“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4).  Without it, no admission.  And that will make you miserable.

 Walk By Sight, Not By Faith

Progressive spirituality says, “Everyone has a story.  We need to listen to everyone’s story.  All stories matter!” – that sort of thing.  The problem is that this generation does not have the biblical knowledge that earlier generations had, thus they have less ability to compare today’s stories with biblical truth.

Worldview is everything.  Our worldview determines how we see the world and how we interpret truth.  The Christian worldview alone has correct answers to life’s fundamental existential questions; it is the Bible that informs our worldview, not culture.

Progressive spirituality may bring the social justice warrior a false excitement, but it never satisfies.  Progressive spirituality relies heavily on culture as a source of truth and is spiritual adultery.  This number is growing.  Recently a group of people were polled about faith & religion.  34% Of Christians said they believed that all roads lead to God.  This is walking by sight, not by biblical faith and it will make you miserable. We become like the God we worship  (Romans 1:25).

Replace Christian Religion with Politics

  • They pore over Nate Silver’s political data analyses with all the rapt attention of day traders sizing up the stock market.  They are social justice warriors, today’s Puritans seeking to impose Democrat ideology by activism.  They are SDA professors deconstructing Adventist eschatology into a monologue against conservatism.  

  • They are churchgoing Adventists hanging onto every word that proceeds out of the mouth of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.  Their positions on certain issues comes more from the Republican party playbook than the Bible.   

And both groups are on their way to becoming emotional and spiritual wrecks, joyless lifeless shells of the imago dei.

Whether you are religious or secular, conservative or liberal, caring about politics too much — or caring the wrong way — can contaminate your soul and poison your emotional and spiritual core (your heart).   

One moment, you’re elated by a new poll showing your candidate surging.  Your faith in humanity is restored by an inspiring video on Twitter.  The next moment, this restored faith is crushed by headlines about sinister voter suppression tactics or the horrible thing that was just said or done by a dastardly hypocrite from the other party.  No one rides these chaotic tides for very long without burning out or breaking down, friend.   God has something better for you and I. 

Politics — political outcomes, in particular — are not a good place for human beings to invest our ultimate hopes and dreams.  Why?  It will inevitably let us down.  Politics will leave you high and dry on an island of anger and disillusionment.  Politics cannot bring joy, hope and peace to your heart. You’ll be drawn into despising people on the other side and coming to regard them not as people but as cardboard cutouts representing all that’s loathsome in the world.

Given the way the Democrat party is championing anti-biblical gender and sexual confusion, human rights abuses, the killing of children through abortion—and the attention that the previous president gave to religious freedom, going all in with the GOP might appear a wise investment.  

It’s not.  Political partisanship has hamstrung Adventism’s ability to pursue what is intended to be the core of its mission: to share the good news of the Everlasting Gospel.  In the same way, many progressive Adventists have made social justice politics their ultimate goal, instead of their pursuit of God. 

Is politics bringing you joy, friend? Does it fill your heart with peace? Be honest.

Both of these examples love this world too much, trading away joy for a pottage of partisan stew.  And they are of all men most miserable. 

Don’t Study the Bible                   

When we neglect the Word of God, our heart gets hungry for truth (Psalm 119:11).  When neglect prayer our heart gets lonely for divine connection (1 John 1:9; Micah 3:4; Luke 18:1).

Committed Christians have traditionally professed that the Word of God is the “norming norm,” the standard that stands above all others.  Liberals, though, began to place far greater emphasis on the human mind and were willing to overrule long-held interpretations of Scripture in order to make peace with modern discoveries and sensibilities (culture).  At heart, then, liberalism is a matter of authority—the authority of the Bible against the authority of the human mind.  One has to take precedence over the other.

Some people want to accept God’s Word on their own terms.  But God gives us no such option. To take the Bible at any terms but its own is to reject the Bible altogether (Psalm 119:89).  And that will make you most miserable.

Follow False Christs

  • Hippie Jesus:  Teaches everyone to give peace a chance, imagine a world without religion, and helps us remember all you need is love, man.

  • Hipster Jesus:  Encourages us to reach our full potential, reach for the stars, and buy a fair trade pumpkin spice free range latte.

  • New Spirituality Jesus:  Hates religion, churches, pastors, priests, and doctrine; and would rather have people out in nature, finding the god within and listening to ambiguously spiritual authors.

  • Revolutionary Woke Jesus:  Teaches us to rebel against the status quo (church), stick it to the man, and blame things on whiteness and patriarchy.

  • Guru Jesus:  A wise inspirational teacher who believes in you and helps you find your enlightened center. He also recommend yoga.

  • Rainbow Jesus:  He makes no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual.  He created LBGTQ+ people complete with temptations and moral failure.  They are pretty much perfect.  All they need to do is act on their unholy urges.  Rainbow Jesus makes everything holy.

By the way, all of these false christs are demons, impersonating our Lord.  And demons will make you miserable.

Cultivate Rebellion in Your Life

Rebellion is a repeated problem in the Bible and interestingly, the prototype of rebellion is Babylon.  For pagan man, ultimate power cannot be divided power so they seek to compel human unity into a new faith (Revelation 17:5–6; 13:16–17).

The name Babylon is thought to derive from bav-il or bav-ilim which, in the Akkadian language of the time, meant 'Gate of God' or `Gate of the Gods'.  God gives them a new name in Genesis:  confusion.”You’re confused!”  

Ever since Babel...  a peculiar mark of judgment on rebellion is spiritual, ethical and sexual confusion (Romans 1).  The people who enter the New Jerusalem however, are different

Seven Consequences of Rebellion

  • You will reject correction (Proverbs 1:24-25)

  • Your example will destroy God’s reputation (1 Timothy 6:1)

  • You will experience guilt (Romans 13:5)

  • You will experience calamity (Proverbs 1:26-31).  God is not sympathetic to rebellious people

  • Will have unmet needs (Psalms 68:6).  “The rebellious dwell in a dry land.”

  • Rebellion opens a person to enemy (occult) attack (1 Samuel 15:23)

  • God will fight against you (1 Samuel 12:15: Isaiah 63:10). You will be . . . . miserable.

Eliminate Distinctions From Your Worldview

Last but not least, great changes are taking place in our culture.  What does this tell us?  Where is it going?

Just in case you haven’t figured it out, homosexuality is not about civil rights.  Gay sex is a sacrament that undercuts society, a battering ram to destroy biblical values in society.

This new sexuality is very religious.   Nature is observed and worshiped in the new sexuality.  Pro-creation violates the natural order of the planet, thus homosexuality pays homage to the planet. 

This is a massive attempt to redefine the image of God in man.  The ground under our feet is moving as neo-pagan culture seeks to eliminate the distinctions between God and humanity, between Creator and creation, between male and female, between good and evil (Isaiah 5:20), between Sabbath and the other days of the week and between light and darkness.  The enemy is waging a massive assault on these biblical distinctions. You’ve seen it happening all around you.

Coming across the ages is the still small voice of God, piercing the darkness, reminding us that there are only two ways of being human.  You will worship creation in a thousand ways, or worship the Creator (Romans 1:20-25).  These are the only two human realities. 

There it is.  If you want to be miserable, this is a sure-fire proposition to achieve it.

 Wait a minute!  What if you want joy in your life?  That’s easy. 

Don’t do any of the above things.

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“These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11).