Excursus, The Enemy Within (Pt 3)

Kris Lundgaard states that "sin tries to persuade your mind to be happy with having a general aim of doing things to the glory of God, without ever considering particular ways to glorify God" (83).

If you add up all the particular drives / reasons for what you do, you'll find the overall purpose of your life, the target your whole life is shooting for, the goal every small action is trying to achieve.

For instance, in counseling we used a kid from my youth ministry days as a test case. The teacher asked me to describe as much of his behavior as I could. On the board he drew a tree and whenever I'd say a different behavior he'd draw a circle symbolizing fruit with an arrow from it with what I said about his behavior.

Then, where the root system should have been he instead drew a heart with the words "I want __________." His thesis: You complete the sentence by making a statement that describes every piece of fruit on the tree, the behavior being the fruit of his heart's desires.

In other words, there was one general desire that manifested itself in at least a dozen particular sinful behaviors. As an aside: Once you've identified that overarching desire you can now counsel them to repent of this sinful desire and replace it with one that is more godly, at which time the heart is changed.

I say all that to say, don't be satisfied with a general desire to please and glorify God. That's too vague. Seek instead to fulfill that goal, not in the macro, but in the micro--at you job, in your marriage, when you watch TV, how you dress.

What's driving you in those particular situations determines whether or not your general goal is the glory of God or not.