I will play my game beneath the spin light

When i was younger i read a book called 'The Phantom Toll Booth', i did think it may have been by Tolkien, but on reflection, i don't think it was. Anyway, the story was about a boy who was given a toll booth for his birthday (yeh i know, just stick with me) and when he drove through the toll booth he ws transported into another universe. It may have been at war, or in some kind of trouble, i'm not sure. Something was going on anyway, and our hero had to drive through this strange land, populated by people who grew down instead of up, and all sorts of other randomness. I don't really remember all that well to be honest.

Luckily, this post isn't about the phantom toll booth, its about the nature of sin. You see, in the book there was a cave that the protagonist stopped in for the night. They served him a certain type of stew, subtraction stew, which was delicious. The problem being, of course that the more you ate, the more you wanted, and the more you wanted, the more you ate. Is this not the nature of the sin which threatens to devour us?

We are designed for a relationship with God. This is a relationship which gives us joy, and pleasure and fulfillment. Are these not the things we look for when we indulge our lust, our greed, our self centredness? And thats the thing, because we were made for something that we don't automatically have (a relationship with God) then we desire all the time. We desire things that our flesh, that the world around us tells us that we need, and it's with these things that we try to fill the hole. The hole only God can fill. And the more we sin, the more we try and fill our longing, our hole up with worldy things, the hungrier we get, because the further we get from God, and the more we train our minds to these things. So the more we sin, the more we desire, the more we sin.

But, we weren't made to lust, or to be greedy, or selfish or whatever. We were made for something much much better, much much higher. We were made for a relationship wth God. And we don't sin because our desire's are too strong and God can't hold them in, but because we're far too happy to fill the hole with what feels good, with what our fallen sinful pleasure sensors tell us we need. We can not trust our fallen, sinful minds, they will lead us astray in a flash. We are, as Piper and Lewis and countless others have written and said, like children happy to make mud pies in the slums because we can not imagine what is meant by a trip to the beach.

Jesus Christ is the end of our longing. He is the fulfillment of our desire. He is the answer. Not sin. Not what are sinful minds tell us is. We need to desire God above all things, for Him to be the King of our longings. Filling the hole we feel with anything else will only make it worse, will only take us further from the solution. Further and further, until it's too late.

We were made for something far better than we think we are satisfied by. Sin will never, never satisfy us. Only Jesus Christ will do that. Let's embrace that truth.