The Thing To Do

I ran into a guy a while back that I knew in the 60s. During our conversation, I asked if he was married and he said, “Yes, 5 times.”

“Good grief,” I said, “why did you get married so many times?” And he said, “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

Isn’t that the way life is? This is often the answer when asked why a person drove drunk, “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.” When a unwed girl finds out she is pregnant. When a drug addict faces the judge on a possession charge.

Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

My body, mind, and emotions desire to rule me. What “I think” is more important to me than what anyone else thinks. I think that what I think is the truth, sometimes even when I am proven wrong. My feelings or emotions are even more important to me than what I think. And it seems as though what my body is telling me is more important that what I read in the Holy Bible.

This was Paul’s dilemma too. He tells us in Romans chapter 7 that the very thing his body wanted to do was what his spirit was telling him not to do. People read this passage and feel like Paul is saying there is no hope to be able to overcome trials and temptations while we live here on this earth. They feel that they will always be a sinner, because they cannot resist temptations as long as they still live in this body. However what Paul is saying is that this is the way it is before Christ, but after we are born again, we can be conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Your spirit through the power of the Holy Spirit is always trying to tell you the right thing to do. Add to that reading the Bible, God’s Word; praying; attending Bible study and church; and contact, fellowship, and accountability with other believers.

Remember, what “seems the right thing to do at the time” might be the wrong thing.

Good Habits

If there is any one thing that I have trouble doing, it is making my bed every day. I don’t know why it is such a struggle to accomplish. If you timed it, bedmaking takes less than five minutes.

I am no amateur at housekeeping either. I learned how to make “hospital corners” with the sheets when I worked at a nursing home back in the 60s. Experts say that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I guess I am  going to have to get some gold foil stars and put one on a calendar for every day I make my bed, like we did as children for brushing our teeth.

Routines and habits. We talk about someone doing something  religiously or habitually and it sounds like that is a bad thing, but we human beings are creatures of habit.

The 60s, when I was a teen, was the era of the free spirit. Do what feels good. Free love. Living together unmarried. Back to nature, living in the woods. No one was going to tell us what to do. Boys rebelled  against their clean-shaven, crew-cut fathers and grew long beards and long hair. We girls rebelled against our aproned mothers and just barely kept house, preferring to let life happen however it would.

However, over the years, I have found that habits aren’t all bad. Brushing your teeth morning and night sure helps you avoid some nasty problems, not to mention it keeps people still speaking to you. Taking a bath, getting a hair cut, holding down a job are not all bad.

Here is another good habit. Hebrews 10:24-25 NKJV says, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some,  but exhorting one another..”

Going to church every Sunday is a very good habit to get into.