THE CAVE NEIGHBORHOOD 

Let’s say you lived during the ice age ❄️ and you don’t have any physical dietary restrictions.

In your cave neighborhood, there is an open public bridge. 

On the right side of the bridge is a lifetime's worth of food - cows, chicken, and even apple trees that somehow survive the cold. On the left side, there are only rodents. But you’ve always lived on the left. All your life you’ve eaten rodents 🐭 and you’ve come to believe that rats are the only food that can satisfy or sustain you.

One day, cats 🐈‍ start migrating in and eating all the rodents and you start to starve. The thing you depended on for sustenance is drying out and you start to get nervous. You check out the food on the other side of the bridge, but instead of noticing all the cows and apples, you say to yourself “there are no rats over here, what will I do?”😱.

There are two lies that stop us from experiencing an abundant life.

Because you believe that only rats can fill your hunger you starve to death. There was plenty of food to sustain you right in front of your nose but your beliefs and poorly-trained appetite led to your undoing. 

Here are two lies that stop us from experiencing abundant life:

1. God and His treasures can’t satisfy us or fill us.

2. God can’t be trusted. 

CROWS: CAN GOD BE TRUSTED? 

A few days ago, some crows were hungry circling my backyard looking for food. So I put some seeds out and they circled it squawking but didn’t come down to eat.

They didn’t trust me, they thought I would hurt them or try to cage them if they took the food but in this case, I was just trying to feed them. There was no other shoe that was gonna drop. I didn't demand payment in return. 

In both stories of the bridge and the crows, their wrong beliefs led to them not getting the food they needed either due to lies about themselves or wrong beliefs about the food offeror. 

BROKEN CISTERNS THAT CAN NOT HOLD WATER

Our wrong beliefs about God and what can satisfy us lead us to run after the wrong treasure and invest in temporal things of this world that can never satisfy. 

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Jeremiah 2:13 

Don’t invest in broken cisterns 🍵. Put your treasure with God and you will have it forever you will never lose a thing. 

Could you recognize the signs and adapt, or would you go extinct?

If you were a caveman or mammoth 🐘 and you knew your ecosystem was about to implode, what would you do? Would you be able to recognize the signs and adapt before it is too late?

It may sound like a ridiculous question, but it is one we are actually faced with if you have spent your life filling your needs by chasing things like more money, your career, relationships, etc. If you have become dependent on perishable things, your ecosystem is in danger - your sustenance isn't going to last and you need to restore the order and put things back in their rightful place. All of those things can be fine as appetizers but not the main dish. 🍚

THE ICE AGE

I was watching a special on the Ice age when Neanderthals 🧟‍♂️ and mammoths really did exist. There is much debate about how they went extinct but one thing they said struck me. Whether or not this is what happened to the Wooly mammoth 🐘, it has been demonstrated in other ecosystems that simply introducing one new predator food may become too scarce to go around and it can wipe out a whole population of another. 

ECOSYSTEMS ARE DELICATE

Ecosystems ♻️ are delicate. If one piece is off it affects the entire system. In the same way, God's ecosystem works when He stays at the center of our life when we spend our life, time, and energy on the things He says have real value. 

When we start feeding our appetites with things other than God, on things in this world that are perishable and superficial, the system begins to break down😔.

You won’t experience the fruit of the spirit 😮‍ or the fullness of life that God intends for you.

You’ll get stress and anxiety 😩because the things you’ve invested the most in can be taken away.  

Just like the wooly mammoth, you cannot remove your main food source and expect to live. 

However, when you are getting your sustenance from God - when you invest in things that moths and rust can’t destroy, you will find whole new security.

FLAMMABILITY

“If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer a great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.” -1 Corinthians 3:12

The author lists two different types of building materials. 

What is the difference between gold, silver, and costly stones vs. wood, hay, or straw?

The difference is in their flammability 🔥 . The first group can survive through the fire, the second would be quickly burned up. What materials are you building your life with? Are you working for things that will last? If you're not, can you recognize it and adapt, or will you just continue down the current path and starve to death while a feast sits right on the other side of the bridge? 

….

Let me know in the comments what you think are some of the main ways we get distracted from the most important things. What are some of the solutions that have been helpful for you to keep your priorities straight?