12All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
not expedient:
- not suitable or appropriate
- improper
- not in order
I Cor. 6:14 ... And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by His own power.
Comments by Joan Boney
I moved to Dallas in 1960 and began watching football that same year. I've watched college and professional football since that time.
I was born again in 1975 ...
There are many things I dislike about football. When the TV shows the fans, they look to be in such a critical condition, fearing a loss to their football team. Sometimes there is a grief for even weeks after a big loss. And after a big win there can be an abnormal exaltation (a high like a drug has taken over). Then when the next loss occurs a low hits and a depression can take place. If it is a really big loss, like Super Bowl, the depression can even continue for months and even into the next season. You can begin to worry ... "How can we fix this ... coaches? ... players? ..."
(You forget you have no power to fix anything. You can't even get in touch with the general manager or people at head office who make the football decisions.)
I know what it is to win and I know what it is to go through season after season losing. When your team wins, you want to hear everything the sports announcers on TV have to say. When your team loses, you don't care to hear about them.
I finally reached some kind of position this year where football winning and losing had lost it's power over me. If a player on my team was injured, it didn't matter. (At one time I would take on real concern over this.) If a player is suspended for the many types of things football players are suspended for, now it really doesn't matter. If we lose a player to another team, it doesn't matter. Somehow the power over me seems broken.
My team was hopeless at beginning of this year. That was really good for expectations were zero. Then they got two new coaches and won five games in a row and even got to top of their division. I felt that old fleshly power of football coming back. But I don't want football to have a power over me. I know what it is like when this happens. I began praying about this. And I am still asking God to help me. I believe God will help me.
If anything other than God and the Word of God exerts power over us, we might need to look closely at that which is trying to control us.
As I wrote this, I felt this was like a drunk feels when overcome by the bottle.
How do we break this up? First we have to want to be free. Then I think we turn to God with a real desire to be free, praying, and following HIM in anything HE shows us to do. I doubt we can do it ourselves. It would be like making New Year's Resolutions to try to set up our own plan of watching or not watching (in case of FB).
But God does have a way to free us when we want to be free. It may be we will have to do certain things or avoid certain things but we must be led by God in these things. We cannot impose our own thinking on ourselves. Those will end up rules to be broken. Our faith must be in God, that HE will lead us. And we purpose to hear from HIM and follow what we hear from HIM by HIS Spirit. He can raise us from the dead people who worship a bottle or football or any other "god". I don't want to worship any other god.