I have some news that some of you will see as wonderful and others will see as quite disappointing. Earlier today I decided to become a football fan. I know this comes as a shock to many of you, but I believe it is the best decision. Later today, I am going to buy a Broncos jersey. I am going to start watching the games religiously. I have even begun studying the players and their stats. I called Comcast and ordered the NFL network. I think I may even call into sports programs on talk radio. My entire life is going to change.
As wonderful as all of this may sound, none of it changes the fact that football remains one of if not the stupidest games on the planet. I can decide to be a football fan, but that has no effect on the reality that I despise football. Ask anyone who is actually a football fan how they came to be a fan, and their answer will not be because they decided to. As many of you know, I am a soccer (real football) fan. Why am I a soccer fan? I am a soccer fan because I love soccer. I never decided to love soccer. I just do. It is great. It brings me joy and satisfaction. Football never has and never will bring me joy, even if I decide to be a fan.
You see, our decisions do not determine our affections. Our affections determine our decisions. Here is what I mean by this. I never decided to fall in love with my wife. I just love her and therefore decided to marry her. I never decided to love my children. I just think they are they greatest things to ever enter my life. I never decided to enjoy hunting, for it has always simply brought me joy. I never decided which flavors are most pleasurable on my taste buds, but I decide to eat the foods with the most pleasurable flavors. I never decided that winter is the best season of the year, but I did decide to live in Colorado where I can enjoy winter. I never decided that hot and humid weather is miserable, but I continuously decide to avoid such weather. We do not get to decide where our affections lie. We simply recognize where our affections lie and make decision based upon our affections.
We had many sayings in Alcoholics Anonymous. One of them was, “Fake it ’till you make it.” There is no such thing as faking wanting to get sober. You either want to get sober or you want to drink yourself into oblivion. If you are “faking” it, you are doing so because you want to get sober. If you do not want to get sober, you would just drink. I never decided that I wanted to quit doing drugs. I realized that I was going to die, and I wanted to not die. Therefore, I decided to get sober because I wanted to live. Our wants and desires determine our decisions, not the other way around.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, it has a lot to do with some very important things. Do you remember making a decision to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you ever asked anyone if they want to make a decision to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Do you know anyone who bases their assurance of salvation on the decision that they made to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Do you base your assurance of salvation on your decision to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Before you jump to conclusions about my theology, let me say that I absolutely believe that we are put to a decision when we are confronted with the gospel. I remember clearly the July evening in 1999 when I decided to ask Christ if He could find some way to forgive me for all the horrible things I had done. So please, do not think I am diminishing the importance of the decisions we make. What I am doing is looking beneath the decisions we make.
We do what we want. While we were yet children of wrath and dead in our trespasses, we made decisions that brought us pleasure. Now, we are alive in Christ; and we still make decisions that bring us pleasure. The only difference between our decisions now and our decisions then is that something else now brings us pleasure. While self-exaltation once brought us pleasure, the beholding of the glory of God now brings us pleasure. C.S. Lewis once said that our problem is not that we seek too much pleasure in the world but that we are too easily pleased by the world. We will always decide to seek pleasure, and our decision to follow Christ is no different.
The question we must now ask is this. How are our affections changed? How is it that we now find pleasure in something that we once despised? The answer is not that we decided to have different desires. No logical man can argue that he determines what his desires are. The answer is that different desires were awakened within us. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6; NASB). When Jesus met with the Samaritan woman at the well He told her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. Everyone who drinks [from this well] will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.” The woman responded and said, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw” (John 3:10,14-15; NASB). Her desire was to have her physical thirst quenched and to not have to walk all the way to the well in the heat of the day. She had no thirst for Christ and only wanted Him because He could better satisfy her physical desires than her other means were able.
We find the same scenario in John 6. Jesus had fed 5,000 men with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. The next day, the crowd was seeking Jesus and found Him across the sea at Capernaum. Jesus spoke to them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you true bread out of heaven. I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst” (John 6:26,27,32,35; NASB). Christ did not come to fulfill our old desires. He came to birth within us new desires which would be satisfied by Him. While we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:5). According to God’s great mercy, Jesus Christ has caused us to be born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3). “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 15:11; NASB). “These things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves” (John 17:13; NASB).
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (Jeremiah 31:31-32; NASB). “I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me. I will rejoice over them to do them good and will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul” (Jeremiah 32:40-41; NASB).
May we wake up every morning and decide to follow Christ. May we recognize the desires He has put into our hearts and freely seek complete satisfaction in the Bread of Life. May we give God glory for the work He has done in renewing us and exult in the proclamation of His grace. May our decisions reflect the work that He has done, and may He continue to uphold us by the word of His power.
- Jason N. Bolt




Even with as much as I travel, I still forget that places like this actually exist. Where I sit right now in my living room seems like a completely different world than where I was just a few days ago. The one nurse at the clinic sees about 30 patients a day, most of which have malaria. The ease and comfort of life in America is so easy and comfortable that I far too often forget and neglect the suffering of other people around the world. What a shame it is that I have to fly around the world in order to have my eyes opened.
In fact, he just told me this morning that he wants to go back to Nicaragua; and I would be more than happy to take him. All of us were able to see and savor Christ in an environment completely different from what we are used to at home. That by its nature enlarges our souls and gives us a greater capacity to know Christ… a process that will undoubtedly continue in all of us throughout all of eternity.
After the broom-clad army chased it from the ceiling, it was hastily put inside of a Tupperware container… alive.
Shortly after, we realized no one was willing to open the container in order to kill it for fear of its escape. So, we put it in the freezer and let nature take its course.
Just as inevitable as the spider encounters is my coming home with a stiff realization of my own depravity. Every time a visit Nicaragua, I understand in greater degrees the depths of my sin and my flesh’s fervent enterprise to divert me from God. In II Corinthians 1:8-9, Paul says that he was burdened excessively beyond his strength to the point of death so that he would not trust in himself but in God who raises the dead. Absurd are the ways in which I trust in myself and not on God who raises the dead. The depths of my depravity seem to go on far beyond what the eye can see. In it, though, I come to see what great a need I have for the One for whom and through whom we exist (I Cor 8:6). In this, I rejoice. Yes, I will gladly rejoice in my unquenchable need for the infinitely sufficient Christ who was and is and always will be!









