Moral Determination = FAIL

I am preparing for our Wednesday night Bible Study. We are currently ready for chapter 3 in the book, Love Into Light by Peter Hubbard. As I am reading through this chapter on "Change" I am once again finding so many connections between the topic of the book and our everyday Christian Struggles. More specifically the unbiblical/wrong methods of change are so familiar to me as the typical way that many in the church have attempted and hoped for change. The one I am noticing now is "Moral Determination." Read this quote and tell me if it rings true to Scripture:

Determination alone cannot lead us to God -- only to gods, individually constructed deities that are manageable and obtainable. If in myself I am determined that I will be able to please God, I am confessing worship to a false god -- either I am turning my aspirations themselves into gods, or I am creating a false version of the true God, a god whom I think will be pleased by my resolutions and performance. The God of the Bible is far different from these false gods: He is higher and holier than all my resolve could possibly obtain. ‘For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’ The determined have their own plan. God dwells with the broken and humble, the powerless and planless.

Oh, how often I have attempted to change based on my own moral determination to do so. And oh how often it has failed.

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The Minnesota Crime Commission wrote:

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.

HARMLESS THOUGHTS

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