Now, we honor God for our sakes, not God’s. By living according to the plans and purpose God has in our lives, we open ourselves up to the value those plans bring us. We aren’t chasing after someone else’s treasure. We’re finding, storing and enjoying our own.
That’s different from the people gathered at The Tower of Babel. It’s also different from how we live our lives today.
Today, we’re taught to chase after someone else’s dream. In school, we learn everything about anything. Everything except for ourselves. We work, day-in and day-out, to build on someone else’s future. Someone else’s dream. We spend our lives forfeiting the right to find and enjoy the treasures of our lives. Simply because we value the promises of man; more so, than the promise of God. So we involve ourselves in the pyramid schemes of the world chasing after fading dream after next. A tale as old as time. All because we don’t value the promise the God has over our lives.
Since we don’t value God’s promise, we act in ways that devalue ourselves. We sell ourselves for money. We chase after the riches of relationships, not the substance. We pursue material wealth and social standing, while ignoring our mental and physical wellbeing. We abuse and abandon our kids for wanting the love that lacks in our lives. It lacks because we’ve spent so little time cultivating the substance of Love that we barely recognize its value and worth.
Marriages are power arrangements. Work is a political ladder. Families are obsolete. The world is burning all around us and our lives are engulfed in the flames. And we’re mad. Mad at everyone around us for leading us down this path. Except, we weren’t lead. We agreed to go. To build a tower that rivaled the heavens. So that we would have a name for ourselves in this world.
But now our cities are burning, and the tower divided. All because we chose not to Honor God. And not to sound too paternalistic. This is the only way we know. The only world we know. How do I find self-esteem in a world built on material and prideful gain?
awakening to ourselves
Honoring God means being open to the possibility that our entire way of life is false. It’s coming to terms with the fact that our ideas; how we form relationships; what we pursue; how, and who, we identify with are, and have been, rooted in notions based deceitful measures.
Meaning. The things, we were taught would make us happy are actually extremely exhausting and self-depleting. That the people we work to impress are as lost and confused as we are. That the money, car and career that we thought would make us happy is actually driving us further away from actual things that make us happy. That the ideas about us and the people around us are personas carefully constructed by entertainment and media.
filling in the gap
It also means recognizing the reverse. That there is an entire reality that has yet to be lived by us. An identity that fully expresses who we are. Relationships that value and add value to that identity. Interests that are truly worth pursuing. A reality worth living.
quality time
All this requires time. It requires rest. Reflection. It requires a hard reset. Back to the way we were before all the system updates. And looking at ourselves for the first time, almost through the eyes of a child. To examine and find appreciation in the things in life that you truly value. And make those updates according to user specification, not the system.
releasing
It also requires releasing our ideas of the past. The good. The bad. The ugly. The hurt. The pain. Recognizing that every moment before was rooted in those system specifications. Hit or miss algorithms for sourcing happiness.
It is a painful process, but it gets easier when you find the right people to go through it.
receiving
It also means opening yourself up to new ideas and experiences. This takes time and shouldn’t be forced. Let it happen naturally. Understanding that we are getting to know ourselves for the very first time. There may be some new ideas, people or experiences that you may have fumbled following the system. It takes time to build appreciation, so take it.
