Corking the Bottle

Here goes the last part of this series. I asked what drives your life. Rick Warren in  The Purpose-Driven Life  ( https://www.churchsource.com/rickwarren ) suggests five drivers that often distract us from what really  should  be driving our lives. Yesterday it was materialism. Today: The Need for Approval -- This was really me. I guess it still is. I was overwhelmed with a need to please my parents. I kept my hair a certain way, wore certain clothes, listened to certain music, and, for the most part, followed the rules of the house. Same in school. I remember being a tattletale. That didn't win approval from my classmates, but I believed I was grabbing positive attention from my teachers. It all seems silly now. "Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone. Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God's purposes for your ...

Take a minute. What guides your life? The correct answer here is God. But all of us -- some of the time, all of the time, or part of the time -- are driven by painful, bad stuff. If you are reading this, maybe you are being driven by alcohol or other drugs. The Self-Driven Life gives us four common things that take the wheel as we drop God off at at a bus stop in Kalamazoo. This is a wonderful book, written by Rick Warren ( https://www.churchsource.com/rickwarren ), that gives me lots of oh-yea moments. Here are his top drivers. For the next five blog posts, I will write a little about each. They are: Many people are driven by guilt. Many people are driven by resentment and anger. Many people are driven by fear. Many people are driven by materialism. Many people are driven by the need for approval. I will dissect each like a frog in a high school biology class.