An exert from THE PIG IN MY HEART
We are all born hungry and needy. From the moment we take our first breath we are demanding creatures; we need love, we need to be held, we need to be fed, we need to be bathed and changed. As infants, we cry long and loud to have these needs met. A baby can often be pacified with substitutes for these fundamental needs but eventually a pacifier will not satisfy, and real food and real love and real nurturing must be received to quiet the wee one and satisfy the need to be fed and held and loved.
As we grow into adults, we are still needy creatures. We still need love and to be held and to eat and to take care of ourselves. We also find that we like to feel important and beautiful and to fit-in and to accomplish our dreams.
But somewhere along the path of growing up, we find great disappointment with life as fewer and fewer of those things we deem needs are being fulfilled. Way down in the cavernous recesses within our hearts we rebel against letting our Creator fill our deepest needs and we look to the world and to others and ourselves to do what only God can do.
We are strange creatures as well as needy ones because we look to everything else to quench our thirsty and hungry souls and find just a dry desert of sand and even as believers, we lash out at God for all the “wrongs” that happen in the place of the “rights” that we think should have happened.
This series, called the Pig In My Heart is designed to help us get to the bottom of our hearts; to talk about and study the real motivation behind our hunger, our hurts and the crater sized holes hiding in there. This study will guide us on a journey of examining our thought processes and correcting the pig-like ones by filling our mind and heart with the word of God.
The pigs that are referred to in this study are referring to what the Bible calls the flesh. What is the flesh? The flesh stands for the natural desires of a person operating APART from God.
Is there anything wrong with wanting to be loved? No.
Is there anything wrong with being concerned about ourselves and our dear ones? No.
Is there anything wrong with wanting to be excellent in all that we do? No.
The wrongness begins when we make the natural desires of our flesh into gods that rule our thought life and set up a throne in our heart. Now as we study together, I want you to visualize anything that is operating APART from God as a really ugly pig.
What does it mean when the Bible speaks of flesh versus the Spirit?
Start your small group discussion and learn and grow with each other.
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