pramsay posted on May 22, 2007 16:19 3794 views
Partying and Getting Drunk

You’re driving by and you spot some of your school friends coming out of a club clasping in one hand their beer and hanging on to their friend with the other. They are laughing their heads off, waving at cars as they pass by, and shouting a few obscenities as they walk down the street. You’re a Christian – but for a few seconds you wonder what it would be like to be having such a good time – letting loose and for once to be totally accepted by school or college friends.

Or you’re sitting in class after the weekend and all you hear are the stories of the weekend parties, who slept with who, the movies they watched and how drunk everyone got. And then usually there is the one real stupid thing that one of the kids did that everybody thought was hilarious. It is hard to explain the feeling that you get as a Christian. You sort of continue on with your school work, feeling awkward that you’re on the outside of it all, wondering what they think of you, questioning if you are missing out on some fun and well….you feel yucky and a bit depressed inside. You know that what you have (Christ and eternal life) is infinitely better and its forever – but at the moment – well you can’t explain the conflicting emotions inside.

The Apostle Peter wrote a letter to Christians who used to party hard in their unconverted days but God’s salvation changed everything for them. Now their former buddies and friends are mocking them and think they are strange for giving all that stuff up. They’re astonished. “What happened to you? Are you weird or something? What’s got into you! You’re so dull and boring now. Have you turned sissy or something….goody-goody- two-shoes.”

Peter wrote:

“…That he (the Christian) no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles,
when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:
Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.”

(1Peter 4:2-5)

In other words, dear Child of God, if that kind of lifestyle is what they call fun, it is short lived. If they think you’re losing out and they’re gaining, the fact is such a lifestyle is short term gain for long term pain. It is: moments of fun and weekends of pleasure resulting in an eternity of suffering, unless they experience the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ. Peter says these same people will be called before the Judge of all the earth and they will have to answer for the choices they made in life. What an awful day that will be for them!

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 73 was having a blue day. He looked at the money the unsaved were making, the fun sinners were having, the goals the ungodly were achieving and the success the godless were realizing. They seemed like they were living the good life and the psalmist wondered if it was really worth living for God. He was deeply upset until he got alone with the Lord in the sanctuary.

When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;
Until I went into the sanctuary of God;
then understood I their END.
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
(Psalm 73:16-18)

It will only take you 60 seconds to grab your Bible right now and read the rest of Psalm 73 – verses 23 to 28. You’ll be glad you did.

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