What Frustrates Us?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Of course, a number of us would say, "Well, that is what I have tried to do.  I have tried to put my faith in my God for my future so that I would have no worries and anxieties.  I have tried to put my faith in my God for my status and my position with my peers so that I wouldn't get resentful when they started to criticize me.  I have tried to put my faith in my God for my own security.  But there are forces inside my personality that seem to be connected by some kind of umbilical cord, some mystical cord or chain to the vagaries of other people and to the inconsistent events that happen to me.”

“Somehow these forces inside my personality are controlled like puppets on strings by the external environment in which I live, by the external people that I deal with, by the fears of the future.  I can't control those forces.”

How can we?  How can we put our faith in God for all the things in our lives and have a sense of rightness that comes because it is simply right?  We are dependent on him for everything that we have.  How can we do that when our own personality seems to relish putting its faith in people and things and events?

There is only one way.  Your personality has to be changed.  If it isn't, you have no hope, because you and I have tried already to control it.  But it has been changed, and remade by your Creator.  Now, would you look at some verses with me that show that is true?  2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”