I asked myself that question yesterday and the answer sickened me. If you ever want to see how disgustingly worldly you are, just answer that question. Granted not all the answers are worldly, but the vast majority for me were just that.
This came about when I was reading C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters...and it came to me when he said:
Screwtape is talking about Wormwood's Christian that he is attacking:
"A few weeks ago you had to tempt him to unreality and inattention to his prayers: but now you will find him opening his arms to your and almost begging you to distract his purpose and benumb his heart."
"As this condition becomes more fully established you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as tempations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention.
You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep;
a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and
nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, '
I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked'."
WOW. STAB ME IN THE HEART. BREAK ME BEFORE GOD...
He then says:
"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you seperate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing.
Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, whithout milestones, without signposts."
WOW. WOW. WOW. The devil is soooooo subtle and I am sooooo stupid and I fall into this trap almost every day. I waste my time that is not mine. I don't own time it's God's time and I waste it doing things that don't matter and never will matter. I waste it on the things that are not eternal and I neglect the things that are eternal. I am such a pathetic sinner.
So as I said at the top. I asked myself the question of what makes me happy. Most of my answers, a vast vast majority were things that serve my flesh. Things that waste my time. A small small minute amount were spiritual things. Because when I thought what truly makes me happy I thought of a good meal or a warm shower or every other comfort imaginable and when it came to prayer and reading my Bible I couldn't say that those made me really happy. Sometimes they make me happy, but more often I'm happy with everything else. Sin nature at its best. That is sad. And it's going to change.
I hope you read this. It's my heart, it's raw and it broke me yesterday. Who knew I'd be broken waiting to do jury duty yesterday? :) God did. A divine appointment.
