Today’s passage says: “Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children.’ Both of these will overtake you in a moment, on a single day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full peasure, in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells. You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’”
These are the kind of passages many people would rather avoid in the Bible, yet many believers’ mindset have not been adapted to the Kingdom’s principles and rebellion, stubbornness, hardened hearts are still urging many to live as they wish, as if they have nobody above their head, as if nobody is watching them in the secret of their room.
Do you feel you are still caught in the pursuit of power and pleasure? Then you are looking more like a Babylonian than a Christian. That’s what today’s passage tells us. My brother, my sister, Babylon’s desire for more power and pleasure in life made the Babylonians believe in their own greatness, thus they claimed to be the only power on earth. They felt completely secure in their position and their King, Nebuchadnezzar, exalted himself as ‘god’. We do exactly the same as long as we refuse to depend on the Lord of lords and King of kings.
My friend, we are not far from behaving like the Babylonians whenever we feel too sure of ourselves, too secure about our position, too self-exalted that things are working the way we designed them and we can’t see the hand of God behind our success. But the Bible also recalls us that the true living God taught Nebuchadnezzar a powerful lesson by taking everything away from him (Daniel 4:28-37). You see, our societies are addicted to pleasure and power and they are promoted and sold to the people in a way that we, as Christians, can easily be caught in dreams that can quickly vanish. My friend, look at your own life and ask yourself how you can be more responsible with the talents and possessions God has given you. How can you use your life for God’s honour rather than your own? Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.