Wilful, wayward and childish discontent!

Ezra 1
Psalm 84, 85
Luke 7

Just wanted to put this scripture here because I thought it was pretty...

Psalm 85:10 Faithful love and truth will join together; righteousness and peace will embrace.

SOAP - Wilful, wayward and childish discontent!

Scripture
Luke 7:30-35 But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John. (Jesus said) "To what then can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: 'We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not cry.' For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine and you say, "He has a demon." The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you say, "Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." But wisdom is proved right by all her children."

Observation
I guess the Pharisees and experts in the law thought they knew better than God, and thus rejected his purpose for them. John lived a minimal life, not indulging in the normal pleasures of man and they thought he was nuts. Jesus came along and joined right in with whatever the people around him were doing and they decided he loved earth's pleasures too much. It seems those people were impossible to please. Reading the Barclay Study Bible again... I really liked this way of stating our impossible to please attitude... "The human heart can be lost in a perversity in which any appeal that God may make will be met with wilful and wayward and childish discontent." Barclay goes on to wrap up this scripture by saying, "Man may misuse their freewill to frustrate God's purpose; men in their perversity may be blind and deaf to all God's appeal. Had God used the force of coercion and laid on man the iron bonds of a will that could not be denied then there would have been a world of automata and a world without trouble. But God chose the dangerous way of love, and love in the end will triumph."

Application
The thing that stands out to me most here is the part about the children in the marketplace who won't dance for the happy songs and won't cry for the sad ones. I am definitely familiar with an attitude where nothing will please me. I love the way Barclay puts it, "wilful and wayward and childish discontent." Wilful? Is our discontent really wilful? Umm... yeah, probably a lot of the time, maybe not always, but definitely a lot of the time. But, thanks to all this journaling and reading, I have a great remedy for those wilful, wayward and childish days! Fear of the Lord! Our Lord is amazing and doesn't have to offer us grace but he does. That's so cool. It's not cool to pout and be wilfully discontent in front of our awesome Lord. I'd say he deserves better out of us than that! And I'm determined (with his help of course... always with his help :-) ) to give him "my best". I don't like the idea of God thinking "well, I was going to do something really amazing through Kristy today, but she's not listening because she just can't be pleased with anything!" Nope, don't want that. Like I said in a recent journal entry, when God calls me, I want to be willing.

Prayer
Dear Lord. I pray that you would give me willing spirit. Help me put away all the silly objections I can find that lead me away from your purpose. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your love. Amen.