Sweet Lies Or The Real Truth?

They come on the heels of your pain with promises to soothe.
Those voices that speak soft and low.
They wrap tender arms around your heart and whisper that it will be o.k. if you will only invite them in.
They are the promises
Promises that mean nothing.
Promises spoken by sweet tender voices of darkness.
Such are the ways of a flesh appetite when tied to drugs and alcohol.
Always promising but never fulfilling.
Empty promises that only give birth to empty lives.
Empty lives which are left discarded like so much trash strewn along the highway. Only declaring that once a life had existed that meant something but now has lost its way following hard after those empty promises. Left for dead by the side of the path. No one notices...and no one seems to care.

But.....
There is one.....
One who does care.
A person....
Whose words of promise will never fail.
Whose promises promote life here.....life now, not something to be laid hold of at some future time. Life here...life real....life!
Take three steps and you'll run into the giver of promises.
He has a name.
Jesus.
Not the Jesus we try to dress up for church, but the one-true-not-watered-down Jesus of the Bible. The one that cannot be defined by the mind, but rather through the heart.
The one who brings strange thoughts to our hearts that contain eternal truth.
Truth that seems almost to be an oxymoron.
IN order to live you have to die.
IN order to get you have to give.
In order to love you have to pray for the very ones on your enemies list.
Such as this doesn't compute in this world, for it is not of this world.
It emanates from a heavenly dwelling and has broken through into our time and space. It is the mandate of the kingdom of God.
The rightful rule and reign of God here on this planet.
Wherever people are loving and following Jesus, then there also will be His Kingdom.

Why not trade the needle for the cross?
Why not pour out the bottle to receive the blood that poured out for you?
Why not discard your "rock" for the real ROCK. 
Take you pain....
All your pain...mix it with your hatred, jealousy, bitterness, unforgiving, self-loathing, bag of feelings and emotions and bring it with you to give away to this Jesus I speak of.
What do you have to loose?
Maybe an old way of living.
What do you have to gain?
Everything.

God on you...
mb