James 4.3-4 claims, you want only what will give you pleasure. You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

What do you think, is what we really want only what gives us pleasure? I’m thinking that God is correct, what I want most and most often is what will bring me pleasure.

God’s description of this malady? Adultery!

God describes my ultimate want for pleasure as adulterous because my greatest desire is supposed to be knowing Him and doing His will no matter how I feel or what I want!

This is true because God is my creator, God is my life sustainer, God is my ultimate Judge and God determines my eternal destiny.

If God made me I should be asking for what purpose? If God will hold me accountable for how I lived on this earth then I should be asking what criteria will He use?

The answers to these questions are prescribed in the Bible which teaches us that we are indeed made by God for the pleasure of God to live forever with God. The only things God has asked, commanded, that I do is love Him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as I love myself.

Loving God and loving others does give me ultimate pleasure but it often begins with my initial discomfort. Most of what I seek for pleasure are things the world offers which are always a cheaper version of what God offers.

For love, we pursue sex. For purpose, we pursue power. For peace, we pursue control. The list goes on. I cannot pursue the false, the temporary and the temporal and pursue God.

To be a friend of God I must walk away from pleasure and the world’s promise of those things that will give me pleasure. God says when I lose my life I will find it. Faith is doing life God’s way trusting Him that it’s a better way to live and produces better results both now and in the life to come.

Instead of adultery, I am choosing faithfulness. I believe staying married is better than having an affair. I believe serving God is better than serving myself. I believe sacrificing for my children is better than gaining for myself.

The best life is the God centered, God first life. I believe this and it’s the life I’m going to keep pursuing.