We're Here for a good time...

Trooper's song from the late seventies expresses many peoples hearts in our culture today.

They think that we are not here for a long time...therefore live for the "good time".

In many cases...this "good time" is really just another way of saying live for as much personal pleasure as you can attain.

If this pleasure means getting naked with as many people as possible...hey...we're here for a good time!

If this pleasure means filling your body with as much drugs and alcohol as humanly possible...then again...we're here for a good time!

In the end...people will say..."I just want to have fun".

The problem with this type of thinking...is that it is stuck in the present.

It doesn't look to its past to try and learn that all of the earlier attempts to grasp lasting fulfillment and happiness...were like trying to hold onto a handful of water...here...and gone!

And it doesn't look to the future. How many people living like 18 year olds...have lasting joy and real pleasure...when they enter their 40's, 50's, 60's?

With their beauty, and strength and sexual powers slowly diminishing every day...they become a display that they have been lied to...by themselves.

Imagine...if you had lived your whole life in a dark, dank prison cell...and that is all you ever knew. You tried to fill you life with pleasure...eating good food...rats and cockroaches...you tried to fill your day with good things...walking in circles...scratching doodlings on the wall...

How would someone explain to you the feeling of the heat of the sun as it touched upon your skin?

How would someone explain to you the beauty of the sky, of the trees...the glorious refreshing feeling of diving into a clean sparkling lake?

How would someone explain to you the wondrous flavor of the multitudes of foods you have never tasted?

As you looked at the hard stone floor...how could someone really explain the comfort of a soft mattress?

Now imagine that someone has actually broken open the prison door...it is no longer locked...unless of course you refuse to remain inside...enjoying all the pleasures of life.

Jesus promised to give us abundant life...He did so by given His own life...so that we could be set free from our sin...and the destruction it brings to us.

But many would rather stay and enjoy the pleasures of prison...because thats all they know...they have chosen rags...instead of true riches...

And the true sadness...is that we are not here for a short time...this life moves into eternity...the prison cell you cling to now...will be yours forever...and the conditions only get worse.