Are You Bound By This World?

Greetings, my friend,

Welcome to The Arsenal, your weekly newsletter designed to train and equip you for a set-apart lifestyle.

As you’re striving to become the best version of yourself, no matter where you are on your journey, I wanted to remind you of something important: You’re not perfect. It’s important to remind ourselves of this, because we have to give ourselves necessary grace when we screw up, whether it’s not staying consistent in our habits, with sin, or both. Because we’re still human, with human desires to sin and serve ourselves rather than what our Father in Heaven has required of us and called us to do.

But because of those human desires and tendencies, I wanted to present this idea of not being perfect as a warning to all who will listen. When people begin to see significant results and improvements from building better habits, learning new skills while becoming smarter along the way, and putting in the work to advance in their careers and/or their calling, they naturally become more capable people who are more confident in their abilities.

In this new, seemingly unstoppable state you may achieve, however, a temptation arises to shift from fully focusing on your calling/purpose in this life to becoming distracted with the glamorous things of the world that were previously out of your reach. This is especially true if Yah has blessed you financially, and you may begin spending more and more time doing activities that distract you and begin to twist your mindset about your life goals and continuous improvement.

What’s more, pride can begin to creep in through the status you may earn, and an entitlement attitude may develop within you that you should be able to have and do whatever you want because you’ve earned it, and anyone who says otherwise is just jealous of your success. This is extremely dangerous and counteractive to the core reasoning behind what got you there in the first place: To humbly connect with and serve Yahweh, the Living God, and to act accordingly in response to the unique anointing He’s placed over your life through living a set-apart lifestyle.

With the groundwork laid, consider this: Imagine the ideal persona you wish to emulate, someone who 1) has learned many important and valuable skills, 2) has a significant amount of personal and business funds, 3) a well-built and healthy body, and 4) possesses a lot of knowledge on several key areas to make you successful in life, as well as a lot of specialty knowledge. Would you not consider this person strong and powerful, in more ways than one? It’s certainly a respectable feat to achieve this persona and the status that often comes along with it.

But despite their power and abilities, even they aren’t invincible. In teaching to a group of scribes on Satan’s dominion, Yeshua mentioned the following:

While this is a metaphorical example, it’s essential to be aware of the danger being presented here to your self-improvement journey. When we reach a place of status and success with achieving our goals, fulfilling our purpose, and maybe even making decent money doing it, we must be especially careful what influences we’re letting into our house, physically, mentally, and emotionally, as our lifestyle changes.

Perhaps we begin focusing on the abundance of personal pleasures we can now indulge in, since “we earned it, right?” Or perhaps we get into the wrong crowd of people we meet along the way or even after we arrive at where we want to be, and they can lead us astray. Or perhaps it’s something as simple as letting that pride sneak in, and consequently, having the wrong motivation for why you do what you do rather than remembering Who got us there.

It's important to realize that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying some well-earned time to yourself every once in a while, engaging in fun social activities (assuming they’re healthy activities of course), and being proud of your accomplishments. But at the same time, be aware that any of these things create a connection to the world around us that can be damaging to living out our purpose we’ve been given if we elevate them to a level where they become the end goal we seek. Why? Because we become bound to the desire of seeking out what the world can offer us rather than what we can offer the world through performing our duty in the Body of Messiah.

If you know your Bible, you may have noticed it’s very well possible that Yeshua could’ve been referring to the story of Samson found in chapters 13-16 of the Book of Judges. In that story, Samson is chosen by Yah for a clear purpose: to deliver Israel from the oppression of the Philistines. Yah instructs him to take a Nazirite vow (never cutting his hair nor drinking wine), and in return, He gave Samson a supernatural strength and combat prowess that allowed him to overtake anything and anyone that stood in his way and fulfill the purpose he was tasked with. Talk about a strong man!

But unfortunately, as the records show, Samson lost his way and fell in love with the wrong type of woman. And it resulted in him compromising the mission, abilities, and respect for Yah’s command over Him that he had been given, all for her sake. And as a result, he was irreversibly harmed by losing his eyesight and also became a slave to the very people he was tasked with freeing his people from. And the woman, Delilah, was the one who walked away better off than she was before with her monetary reward from the Philistines. Samson’s “house” was plundered, to refer back to Yeshua’s metaphor.

While Yah did eventually allow Samson to redeem himself in an act of sacrifice to finish the mission and fulfill Yah’s purpose for his life, as Yeshua so graciously does for us through cleansing us of our sin if we turn to Him for forgiveness, I hope the parallels between the Samson story and Yeshua’s words helped you perform some introspection. Samson’s story is a great example of a living person who became the person Yah needed him to be to fulfill his calling, and yet he lost sight of the mission by becoming emotionally bound to something that put him in a position to compromise his beliefs and values, all for something that didn’t even matter in the end and also gave him a permanent handicap.

So all of this begs the question: How often do we find ourselves emotionally bound to unhealthy things in our lives, yet we don’t even realize it? And how often is it that we find ourselves distracted from what we know we should be doing because we’ve become attached to ideas, activities, or even other people that don’t have our best interest at heart? What kind of consequences might those things already be having in our spiritual walk and living out that purpose we’ve been anointed with?

I challenge you, brothers and sisters, do not be bound to this world. Don’t become bound by your desires to focus so much on the pleasures of this world and what they can offer you. For the world protects and serves its own, but we have a higher God that we serve that protects, provides, and guides us, and one who has called us out of this fallen world. As the apostle John wrote:

And most importantly, don’t forget that the blood of Yeshua frees us from our chains: He provides a way out of the bondage we’ve knowingly and unknowingly subjected ourselves to, and I encourage you above all else to seek Him and repent daily, that you may you understand what it truly means to be free in Messiah.

Behind the Screens: My Weekly Learning

I had a close friend bring up to me in conversation this past week how there seems to be change in the air these days, but that they’re ready to accept whatever it is, no matter what that looks like. I was kind of astounded by them saying this, because I had been feeling the exact same way for a while: I fully agree with them, due to personal changes in my own life, other peoples’ lives, and the geopolitics in our world accelerating and fluctuating at a rate we’ve never seen them before. But it was also quite interesting to note how yet another person is beginning to so noticeably feel a shift in the world around them too. And I’ve heard this topic being brought up by people my age and older adults, including a famous speaker and teacher I heard several talks from at the annual Revive conference I attended in Tennessee this past month.

I don’t know exactly what’s coming and what that looks like for our society, aside from the end times prophecy that’s laid out for us in the Word. Perhaps it’s just the state of being in my early 20’s and all the exciting changes that comes with that. But something within me strongly tells me that there’s something deeply spiritual happening in the world around us, especially after receiving confirmation from others with different backgrounds than me.

I wanted to mention all this because with so much uncertainty in the world right now and even in our own personal lives at times, I believe it’s just a louder call to get right with The Father before it’s too late. Even if the events of biblical prophecy don’t start manifesting themselves for another 10, 30, or 50 years, it’s undeniable that our world is constantly growing darker, and we have to know how to fight it in our personal lives and corporately as the Body of Messiah. And utilizing our discernment as me, my friend and others have demonstrated as we go about our lives in this fallen world is a must not only in the long-term, but also each and every day as we analyze and challenge ourselves to be more like Yeshua each and every day.

So I accept whatever’s coming, whether it be good, bad, or worse. After all that Yahweh has done for me compared to what this sinful, wicked world boasts is so great, I know where I stand. And I encourage you to fully embrace the right stance, too, and do what’s necessary to get to that point.

Be blessed, my brothers and sisters.