The original goal of most people is to try to find happiness, have fun, and avoid pain. In the pursuit of having fun and being happy, they discover things that bring them a lot of pleasure. Some things make you happy and provide you with a mild to moderate amount of pleasure. But, you typically find that there are other things that create extreme pleasure and are a lot of fun. Many people mistake this extreme pleasure for happiness and start pursuing it instead.

There are places where you can spend your money that don’t have anything to do with food, clothing, housing, and transportation. In addition to the basic needs of life there are things you can be drawn into that will start to pull more and more of your finances away from those things you have to have. The world calls them entertainment, recreation, parties, times of relaxation, and places to unwind. And, there are GOOD types of entertainment, recreation, parties, times of relaxation, and places to unwind. But, just because these places of extreme pleasure are given the same name doesn’t make them the same kind of places.

In your pursuit of happiness, if you start getting involved in extreme pleasure, you will discover that this kind of “happiness” isn’t free. The more you head in this direction, the more money it will take. You aren’t in the place where mild to moderate pleasure exists. You aren’t in the place where normal life is; in the place where mild to moderate pleasure and normal life exists there is the mutual benifit of enjoying one another’s company. There is friendship, companionship, working together for mutual goals, and helping one another FOR FREE.

In the normal areas of life where you are doing the things you are doing because you care about these people, you aren’t trying to exploit them. Money isn’t even involved as a motivation for why you, your spouse, your family, your relatives, your friends, and your associates help each other. But, when you leave this area of life and go into the extreme pleasure area, drugs, alcohol, sex, extreme parties, and “friendship” cost money.

Your need for money will accelerate the more you get involved with extreme pleasure. And, you will find yourself having a hard time being willing to invest in the normal expenditures of life. Jesus is offering you a way to enhance normal life so that it becomes a tremendously enjoyable life. It involves love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). But, if that is too tame or boring to you, then Satan and the world offer you sin.

Gal 5:19-21 (NIV) The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery (excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures); idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Once your body experiences one or more of these things, you no longer are in charge of your life. Your body will do whatever it has to do to get you to give it as much as you can afford.

Some of the things that are fun, pleasurable, and make you happy, leave you feeling good about yourself. But, there are other things, that God calls sins, that create extreme fun, are extremely pleasurable, and seem to make you very happy; but, they leave you feeling guilty afterwards. Those things that are mild to moderate pleasures will satisfy; but, those extreme pleasures, that God calls sins, will leave you with confusion and emptiness. Typically some kind of sin is behind every problem you face.

Not only does extreme pleasure not satisfy, it DEMANDS that you do it again and again. It will addict you so that you lose your ability to resist its demand. Those things the Bible lists as sins are like bait; they can give you extreme pleasure but have a “fish hook” inside the “benefits.” The end results leave you with emotional, relational, financial, and physical problems. They start to erode away your normal, healthy life and draw you into a dark way of life.

Let Jesus look through your heart and life. As you go through this study today, let Him see if there is ANYTHING that you need to repent of. If you discover that sin is a part of your problem, tell Jesus you are sorry, ask Him to forgive you, and then ask Him for the power to NEVER do it again. It is at the moment of repentance that things change in your life. You don’t ACTUALLY change until you WANT to change, ASK Jesus to forgive you for hurting yourself and other people, ASK Him to empower you to change, BELIEVE He forgave you and gave you the power to change. From that moment on, you are ready to study and pray for those things Jesus is giving you the training and power to change into.

Doing the right thing the wrong way or for the wrong reason, can create a lot of confusion. Doing your best and it turning out with bad results is frustrating. Sincerely applying yourself to an issue but it not ending up well, can be discouraging. When you get involved in things like extreme pleasure, you typically do it with honest, sincere motives; but, it didn’t turned out well for you; you didn’t find the happiness you were seeking.

When you follow your friends, pattern your life after those you think are experts, and do what you see “everyone else” doing, you get taught wrong methods for living life; and, it sets you up for failure. If you have tried a lot of wrong cure procedures you got through world training, it causes you to be discouraged and frustrated. It is important to be trained in the right way of living life. If that doesn’t happen, you can’t expect to win at it because your methods are faulty. Your job is to prepare yourself for a successful life.

If you ask Him to, Jesus will teach and empower you to have a successful life by you being a successful person. Once that STARTS to happen you can pass your successes on to those you care about. However, you don’t have to wait until you are TOTALLY successful, you are qualified to share each, individual breakthrough no matter how small it may be. BUT, don’t try to pass on something you have learned but aren’t living yet.

You can tell your methods are faulty by the results or lack of results you are getting from them. The consequences of faulty methods are, you don’t get the kind of results you were looking for. If you will ask Him to, Jesus will provide you with methods that are NOT faulty. You will see that they produce results that are win/win for everyone involved.

Let’s say you are driving a car the way you were taught; but, you are having a lot of wrecks. You can blame all the other drivers; you can blame your car; and, you can blame it all on bad luck. But, if you keep on having wrecks, you might want to question the way you were taught. Your experiences in your past can help you see you need Jesus’ help. Jesus is an expert in training you with methods that bring great experiences and great results. This happens because His methods are based on truth, based on you treating yourself and others with respect and love, and based on you being connected to Jesus’ supernatural provisions.

You have picked your philosophies for life which decide what you believe to be true. Have you ever believed something with all your heart and found out you were wrong? How did you react to that discovery? Were you able to admit it was wrong; or, did you try to justify your mistake, explain it away, try to make it look right, or, just ignore it? If you just explain it away, you are not going to evaluate your belief system. You will never improve, succeed, get solutions to your problems, and change, if you can’t see where you are wrong. If you will ask Him to, Jesus will help you make wonderful changes, and He will make sure you are changed in the RIGHT way.

How can you be changed, trained, and helped in the RIGHT way, if you aren’t teachable? If your mind is made up, if you are too prideful to be taught, or you aren’t willing to be made aware of your areas of ignorance, you will be stuck. But, how can you be sure you are getting the RIGHT answers and know you are unlearning WRONG things? Jesus’ teaches you ways of living life and treating people with those things you want for yourself. Mat 7:12 (NIV) So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Instead of you going around trying to make everyone treat you the way you want to be treated, you go around treating everyone the way you want to be treated; you set them an example of how to treat everyone.

This isn’t your first day on this planet; your issue with divorce isn’t something you haven’t tried to solve a lot of different ways. The question is, have you come to a place where you are looking outside of yourself for help? Are you convinced that you aren’t your own answer to this problem? Are you willing to allow Jesus to show you where you are going wrong? Before He can untrain you, redirect you, and help you make a U-turn, you have to be convinced that you need to make that change. If you are sure there is nothing wrong with you and your methods; or, you think they just need some minor adjustments, you will be stuck.

Are you a person who typically has a lot of self-esteem and confidence; or, are you a person who has a lot of self-doubt and insecurity? If you are a person that feels you deserve Jesus’ help, you will find that He won’t help you. If you are a person who feels that you don’t deserve His help, He won’t help you either. Grace and mercy remove the issue of what you deserve. Jesus only responds to you through grace (getting gifts you don’t deserve) and mercy (not getting punishment and consequences you do deserve). He only helps you through the process of gifts. He will only help you, if you are willing to establish a grace and mercy relationship with Him. Are you ready to start being helped through FREE gifts from Jesus? Pray that He helps you give up the issue of whether or not you deserve His gifts.