Ben’s Musings

Talking to a friend recently, I mentioned this stuff below and he recommended I write down my thoughts. So here it is:

1 Corinthians 6 v 12
“Everything is permissible for me”, but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”, but I will not be mastered by anything.

1 Corinthians 6 v 10 v 23 + 24
“Everything is permissible”, but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”, but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.

In Christ we are free, and free indeed! The freedom Christ brings is the freedom not to sin. We no longer are bound by sin and are able to live sinless lives. But we still have freedom of choice and can still choose between right and wrong and can choose to sin.

What Paul is saying here is that in Christ, everything is permissible. We can do anything we want - but…

A Christian life should be lived to please God, and Paul gives some great guidance here in how we can make better decisions to please God more.

In making a decision, we must decide if it will be beneficial. Beneficial: Producing or promoting a favourable result; advantageous.
Firstly, will it benefit for God and His Kingdom?
Secondly, will it benefit those around us (both Christian and not-yet-Christian)?
Lastly, will it benefit oneself?

Paul then warns that we must make sure that whatever we are thinking of doing does not master us. If you MUST do this or you MUST have that, then that thing is mastering you. We must not become enslaved by anything √? tobacco, sex, food, gossip, highs, etc. - because we should only have one master √? Jesus. Being enslaved by something also takes away much of your decision to choose whether to do it or not so you can no longer choose to do the right thing.

The next thing to bear in mind is whether it will be a constructive thing to do. This is quite similar to the beneficial question, so I think a more useful and accurate term for what Paul is getting at is “helpful”.
Firstly, will it help God and His Kingdom?
Secondly, will it help those around us (both Christian and not-yet-Christian)?
Lastly, will it help oneself?

Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. If we did this with every decision, then we will already be making good decisions!

I’ve finally got my new phone unlocked and have taken some pics! Here are some:

My Beautiful Wife, Mary-Lou

My Mum (Sally)

My Dad (www.garygibbs.co.uk)

My Sis. (Katy)

My Bro. (Tobbit)

My new phone can also take Panorama’s so here’s one on a train!

I got a webcam with my Christmas money this year. I thought most of my friends had one too. I was sadly wrong and now I have no-one to share the delights of my face with. But here’s a picture I took from it!

I also bought some bathroom scales to monitor my weight. I decided upon this purchase because I am now only eating soups in an effort to lose some belly. I am also going to buy a second hand Bike for exercise (that is my present from Mary-Lou).

Other presents I got were an electric shaver, Kurt Cobains Diaries, Star Wars Clones on DVD, Kanye West’s new album (very good), and my yearly Space Calendar.

Mary-Lou’s brother Nelson also gave me Call Of Duty for the PC which I am well into, it’s really intense! He also gave me his old phone, a Sony Ericsson K700i. Unfortunately it is locked on the T-Mobile network and I’m on Orange, so were getting it unlocked, then I will have a camera phone from which I can share my photo’s on this Blog.

I currently have an error prone Samsung E800. I got it cos it had a camera and I wanted to share photo’s I took on this blog. But then I realised that you can’t get the photo’s off the phone! So what’s the point of having a camera on it if you can’t get the photo’s onto a computer! I have been frustrated ever since, and I cant upgrade it for free until Feb. 20th. So watch this space for photo’s.