Friday, August 31, 2018

You Like That?!

Current Minnesota Vikings starter Kirk Cousins went through a crushing onslaught of fan and media criticism in addition to multiple votes of no-confidence from his former team’s ownership and front office in the form of franchise tags instead of having the ability to negotiate a new deal or an extension as is customary for most starting NFL quarterbacks. After one comeback win for the Washington Redskins in 2015, Cousins yelled, “You like that?!” to CSN Mid-Atlantic reporter Tarik El-Bashir lending the saying to become the team’s rallying cry for the remainder of the season.


It sounds like a good time until we find ourselves caught up in seeking the attention and becoming too craven to shy away from it.

How do we know this? 

By looking at our smartphones and acknowledging that we too, have become encapsulated by our social media accounts. People participate in challenges on YouTube and Snap to generate likes on Facebook and Instagram or more Twitter followers and reposts on Pinterest; I’m not above the fray here or even in this blog as I point out stuff that I have done and to an extent, am still doing. These posts aren’t just because I have steam to blow off or due to becoming an authority of some things as much as I genuinely enjoy the feedback and pats on the back for roughly seven hundred words from my mind and keystrokes to the rest of the world to read, parse, discuss, or dismiss.

This is akin to looking for love in all the wrong places. You like that?!

Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6 how to give Him praise – and it is not some superfluous prayer that references the 42-generational lineage of Christ and gets the church mothers swooning all over the front pews on Communion Sunday. In my own guilt from sounding like I wanted to be seen during devotional and praise service as opposed to giving an authentic conversation with the ensuing backslaps of a job well done, it sometimes feels like I indeed have missed the mark with the overly enunciated tongue thereby leading me to recognize that my own words in their own symbolism are slanted toward the approval of man in contrast to the true glorification of our Lord and Savior.

When you do it wrong, you end up like Maximus from Gladiator. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?



How do I kill that internal rallying cry?

Writer John Piper had an idea, found in his book What Jesus Demands from the World. Self-denial and fixation of the self are essential, but O how easy it is to be made much of even my own self-denial! How shall this insidious motive of pleasure in being made much of be broken except through bending of my faculties to delight in the pleasures of making much of God! Christian Hedonism is the only solution. It is deeper in death to self. You must go deeper into the grave of the flesh to find the truly freeing stream of miracle water that ravishes you with the taste of God’s glory. Only in that speechless, all-satisfying admiration is the end of self. (What Jesus Demands, 136-137)

Only Jesus is the true Living Water and in Him, we shall never thirst. Only by centering ourselves into wanting Christ and the approval of God will our self-flagellation for human approval will be broken. The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses and enables us to do the impossible:  to say no to ungodliness and open our eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Christ. In this concept, we can influence more souls via our platform unlike by merely being a do-gooder.


It is only when we renounce our selfish desires and exalt Christ that we truly become free from condemnation (Romans 8:1), fully satisfied in Christ (Psalm 16:11) and free to yell, You like that?! sans consequence for the good of our neighbor and the glory of God.



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