I just had one of my old youth leaders call me up to ask if the rules they made me follow messed up my life.\u00a0 Now you have to understand that I was a rebel through and through.\u00a0 I think I caused nervous breakdowns in some of my teachers and other leaders as I was growing up.\u00a0 I know I caused my Dad quite a few headaches.\u00a0 And none of it came because I hated these people.\u00a0 I didn’t have anything against teachers or parents as people, I just didn’t like to follow rules.\u00a0 I thought I was above the law.\u00a0 I didn’t need anybody telling me what to do.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 All that led to was an out of control life.\u00a0 I had no direction, no drive, no passion.\u00a0 I was like a rocket without any controls.\u00a0 And a rocket without controls is nothing more than a bomb.\u00a0 And I caused a lot of hurt for other people and myself.<\/p>\n
Fortunately God put people (like my youth leaders) in my path that helped to direct that energy.\u00a0 They didn’t give up on rules or discipline, and at the same time, they didn’t give up on me.\u00a0 They loved me in spite of the difficulty I brought.\u00a0 They saw potential for good where there was nothing but explosive before.\u00a0 They knew that this rocket needed control in order to really fly.<\/p>\n
Obviously you need good rules that come from people who care about your future.\u00a0 And isn’t that what Jesus did anyway?\u00a0 God gave us all sorts of good moral laws to live by–laws that would benefit our hearts and our families and our societies.\u00a0 And when we obey God, our lives are naturally better.\u00a0\u00a0 And when Jesus came he was full of grace and loving kindness, but he didn’t give up on the rules.\u00a0 He fulfilled them, and gave us a great example to live by and find fulfillment in our own lives.<\/p>\n
Of course we can choose to obey or disobey.\u00a0 We can choose to follow the rules or ignore them.\u00a0 That’s always our choice.\u00a0 But we also have to deal with the consequences of our decisions.\u00a0 God gave us free will, and if we use it to break his law, our free will carries us away from God.\u00a0 And if we don’t repent and start obeying, that separation becomes permanent.\u00a0 But we can use our free will to obey God.\u00a0 We can be motivated by love to do what we know in our hearts is right.\u00a0 We can direct our energy for good uses and learn to mount up on wings as eagles.<\/p>\n
It took me awhile to learn the lesson.\u00a0 But I am very grateful for the people who taught me that having direction and control is a good thing.\u00a0 And you know what, the rules aren’t what save you.\u00a0 They are more like the training wheels of life that teach you to have self control.\u00a0 Rules can’t help you if you think they are only there to be broken.\u00a0 The sign that says “DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE!” can’t save your life after you’ve touched the wires.<\/p>\n
So the goal is not to just follow rules, but to learn the reason behind the rules.\u00a0 And when you finally see past the law of God to the love that motivates it, then you start to understand why loving God and loving your neighbor makes obsolete the laws about murder and adultery or gossip and dishonoring your parents.\u00a0 Because if you truly love someone, you will always do right by them.\u00a0 And you will be living out the law without even thinking about it.<\/p>\n
Think about it.\u00a0 There are STOP signs at intersections to keep people from crashing into each other.\u00a0 And people who are reckless and selfish will often run through them or just do the rolling stop thing.\u00a0 But besides being illegal and punishable by a fine, it’s dangerous and many people have been killed and injured because they went through a STOP sign.\u00a0 But someone who cares about themselves and others doesn’t need a sign.\u00a0 Even in an unmarked intersection, they will still slow down and yield and even stop to make sure that nobody gets hurt.<\/p>\n
The Bible doesn’t say “spare the rod and spoil the child” because Jesus hates kids.\u00a0 Jesus welcomed kids.\u00a0 He loved kids.\u00a0 But he also knew that discipline can harness a person’s energy and give them direction and drive and build great character.<\/p>\n
I still have that “rebellious” trait in me today, but now it is directed for good.\u00a0 Now I can go against a world that tells me to be selfish and self-centered.\u00a0 Now I can harness my energy for good instead of evil.\u00a0 And now my life is fulfilling, my heart is at peace, and my joy of simply being alive is always there.<\/p>\n
So I praise the Lord for his guidance and discipline through people that loved me enough to lay down the law for my own benefit.\u00a0 Because it helped me to become the person I am today.\u00a0 And it helped me to see the benefits of following Jesus.\u00a0 And for that I will be eternally grateful!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just had one of my old youth leaders call me up to ask if the rules they made me follow messed up my life.\u00a0 Now you have to understand that I was a rebel through and through.\u00a0 I think I caused nervous breakdowns in some of my teachers and other leaders as I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-day-in-the-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}