Romans 13:13-14
By Drew Zuverink
"Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and Jealousy. Rather, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh."
Don't get drunk. Don't have sex before marriage. Don't do this, don't do that. Don't. Don't. Don't.
Does God ever seem boring to you? Being drunk is a lot of fun, it really is - I used to do it a lot. So is experimenting with sex, marijuana, cocaine, and the like. I'll even admit something controversial; sometimes I miss the feeling of being high with my friends (elders please don't fire me I need this job.) All of those things are fun, really fun, and God is against them.
For years I viewed God as being, at best, anti fun and boring, and at worst, he was just plain grumpy like the grumpy old man who always yelled at my friends and I for catching turtles in his pond. I felt that way about God because the things that I enjoyed the most were the things that he didn't want me to do. I thought to myself, sin is fun and God is against sin, therefore God is against fun.
But as a young person, with little life experience, I only understood one half of sin. I correctly learned that sin is really fun, but I had yet to learn that sin is also very destructive. It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I started to see what the destructive power of sin was doing to my life. All of those really enjoyable sins were taking me to a really dark place, and I finally realized that God didn't hate sin so much because it was fun and he was jealous of it, but he hated sin so much because he knew what it would eventually do to a person.
At that moment I learned a very valuable life lesson, that God wants people to enjoy life, but he wants us to enjoy life through things that are purely good, and not destructive. I realized that God is pleased when I enjoyed things like sports. He is the one who made people with creative minds that could come up with sports, and he engineered our bodies so that we could run and jump and dance and swim. Without God, there would be no sports. I also used to love drawing things. I would sketch pictures of people, animals, cartoons, you name it - and again, I realized that God enjoyed knowing how much I loved expressing my creative side in that way.
So what do you enjoy doing? Are you a dancer, a musician, an artist, or an avid adventurer? Whatever it is that you enjoy, so long as it isn't sinful, God is the one who made it all possible. Without God there would be nothing good or fun at all in this world. Even sex, which if you polled Americans, would probably be voted as one of the most enjoyable things that someone can experience, is a gift from God. He made our bodies to enjoy sex, he didn't have to do that, but he chose to. Why? Because God loves pleasure, and he loves watching people enjoy his good creations.
So next time you are tempted to view God as boring, make a list of all of your favorite things (that aren't sinful) and then tell God how those things make you feel and why you enjoy them so much. I promise you, he will love to hear it, because behind every enjoyable invention, hobby, or activity, is a God who loves to lavish his grace on human beings.
Lastly, before I conclude, let me just point out that the most fun and enjoyable life on earth is not this one, but it will be our next one. Once God brings heaven down to earth and removes everything destructive from this earth forever, we will be free to enjoy life the way that God originally intended. We will be free to explore science with perfect teamwork. We will be free to enjoy sports without the fear of injury or bad sportsmanship. We will be free to climb the highest mountains and see the most beautiful sights in nature without the fear of heights. Who knows, I might even ride on top of a great white shark without being afraid at all.
God wants people to experience life on the new earth, and that's why he asks his followers to sacrifice some of our wants and desires in this life, so that we can dedicate more of our time to helping him bring people there. I know that it can be tempting to think God is boring when he asks us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus' example of a life of service. But he asks us to do that with a promise; that in the next life, we will be free to enjoy his good creations with all of the people that we sacrificed for, so that they could be there too.
Commanding people to live for him and not for themselves does not mean that God is anti pleasure, it means that he wants as many people as possible to be able to enjoy the ultimate pleasure that he has planned for eternity.
What a God that we serve! I hope and pray that this helps you to see how God is the exact opposite of boring.