The Mirror We Avoid

"The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world."
— John Piper, A Hunger for God

A Passage You Want to Skip

I'm sitting at Rosemary Beach this morning. My family is still asleep. The Gulf is doing exactly what it should. And my brain — as it tends to do when the noise finally stops — went somewhere heavy.

2 Timothy 3:1-5.

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power."

My first instinct was to scan it like a checklist of other people. I know that guy. That's definitely him. It's easy to read Paul's warning as a cultural diagnosis of everyone else. It's much harder to sit with the possibility that the patient is you.

What Came Up When I Got Honest

Here's what I didn't expect on this trip: I came with very little weighing on me. Things are going well — momentum in the businesses, clarity on direction, good things happening. And I noticed something uncomfortable in the quiet this morning.

I had less to talk to the Holy Spirit about.

What it revealed is that most of my relationship with God is structured around me — my problems, my desires, my ambitions, my fears. I come to Him loaded. When I'm not loaded, I don't know what to do with the silence. I don't know how to ask the Holy Spirit questions about Himself. I don't know how to let His agenda become mine — especially if I'm not particularly interested in it.

And then there's this: things are going well, and I find myself celebrating. Which is right. But do I celebrate God — or do I celebrate the person?

Even here at the beach, I catch my mind drifting — not to prayer, but to a beach house I'd like to own someday. To where we'll eat tonight. To what needs to get done when I get home. Physically present, mentally engineering the future.

And that's the question underneath all of it: Is the life I'm imagining for myself the life God imagines for me? Is it the life that brings Him maximum glory — or is it the life I've negotiated Him into blessing? Because I do negotiate. I build a compelling case for what I think is best, present it to God, and wait for Him to agree. I call it surrender. But often it's just a well-dressed pitch.

That's not a cultural problem. That's a me problem. And it maps directly onto 2 Timothy 3.

The Most Dangerous Line

"Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power."

The dangerous version of this man is not the openly arrogant or the visibly greedy. It's the man who has learned the vocabulary of surrender without the practice of it. The man whose life looks like godliness from the outside and functions like self-rule from the inside.

That man looks a lot like a leader who cares about his faith. He might even write blogs about it at the beach.

Why This Feels Like Right Now

We've rebranded the whole list:

Lovers of self → self-care.
Lovers of money → stewardship and legacy.
Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God → enjoying His gifts.

None of these are evil in themselves. That's the point. The drift is never obvious. It's always disguised as something reasonable — something that sounds, when you say it out loud, almost like wisdom.

The Questions Worth Sitting With

The Spirit convicts the man who is listening. Silence is not a luxury — it's a diagnostic tool. Here's what I've been sitting with:

• Am I seeking God's direction — or His endorsement of a direction I've already chosen?
• Do I know how to ask the Holy Spirit questions about Himself — or is He only useful to me when I have a need?
• When things go well, do I celebrate God — or do I celebrate the person?
• Am I present to this moment, or designing the next one?
• Is the life I'm imagining for myself the life God imagines for me — or have I negotiated Him into blessing my version of best?

What You Do When the Diagnosis Lands

Don't minimize it. The Spirit is a surgeon, not a critic. He convicts to heal, not condemn. But healing requires an accurate wound.

Name it specifically. Vague confession produces vague change.

Bring it to the altar — and leave it there. The traits in 2 Timothy 3 are all forms of self-rule. The antidote is not self-improvement. It's genuine surrender of the specific area where you've been sitting in God's chair.

Build the infrastructure that makes drift harder. Someone who knows the real version of you and has permission to say "I think you're negotiating with God again."

The Invitation

The beach will still be here in an hour. The questions are worth sitting with first.