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In its simplest form, there are two types of sinners; those that don’t care about God, and those that don’t care about people.  Much like the world we live in today, Paul’s words could have been written in the 21st century.  The Gentiles were lost in selfishness, putting their pleasures and their wants ahead of others.  Paul addresses them in the latter part of chapter 1. Not to be outdone, he takes a swing at the Jews calling them out for judging others when they themselves are doing the same things.  Both of these cultures are lost in the same self-righteousness that all of us go through today.    Most sin is based on a love for oneself. Throughout scripture, man has put himself before God.  Disobeying God, hating God, or ignoring God.  We can see God everywhere; His general revelation is clearly laid out in His creation (Romans 1:20).  We are responsible when we choose to ignore Him. I see it every day; society’s idea of what we should look like, what we should say, or what is acceptable, is ingrained into the Christian guild.

I had a young man the other day come up to me and was distraught about being hurt. He didn’t know how to handle the situation.  He kept talking about how he couldn’t workout and how he couldn’t perform at his peak.  You could see it was bothering him. I kept trying to talk about rest.  God has a plan for rest, and it is ok to rest.  After trying to convince him, to no avail, that it would be ok, it hit me.  He could not rest, he idolized himself.  He had a body issue and he needed to workout, or he saw himself as fat. This young man had eight pack abs and twenty-inch cannons for arms.   We as humans, have become so absorbed in the idea of what we should look like, we fail to realize it is putting up a separation between God and us.

I only know what he was going through because in 2015 I struggled with a hurt back. I wanted to workout, swim, bike, and run but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, I only made things worse. It wasn’t until I completely stopped and rested and had a massage therapist work on my back that I started to feel some relief. Through this period in time, God was letting me see how much I was relaying on my own strength and not putting my faith in Him.  Our body is God’s temple and we are supposed to take care of it, but when we become self-focused and our bodies become more important than the Lord, we must step back and refocus on the Lord.  Our energy is a gift from God.  He allows us to use it to be a witness for him, but only when we keep the right perspective.