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What are you putting in your tank?

Is God the source and center of your joy? Is He your all? Or, another way to ask the question is this, is God the fuel you run on? Or are you filling your tank with something else?

I get the idea from C. S. Lewis, who wrote:

"What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could 'be like gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents a machine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human race to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1952] 49-50.)

So, when we seek happiness in other things - the creature rather than the Creator - whether money, sex, or power, recreation or vocation, food or drink, spouse or child, substance or experience - it is like trying to run a gasoline engine on water or sand. It simply will not work. In fact, it destroys the machine.

The reason why humanity is broken is because we have tried to run our lives on the wrong fuel. Our disorders are worship disorders. Our sins are not just behavioral problems, but deep idolatries.

What are you putting in your tank?

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