Natural Man and His Cookies

     I've learned through my relatively short time on earth that my brain doesn't work like a normal persons brain... lol.  I can memorize, remarkably well, random facts and useless information. Pointless information like music and movie trivia, my brain just eats up. The plastic things on the ends of shoelaces are called aglets, the dots that Indian women wear on their foreheads is called a Bindi, "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" is a one-hit wonder song by the band Cutting Crew, A baby giraffe is about six feet tall at birth. [That was a huge tangent.. I told you my brain is crazy!] My brain thinks about random things that seem useless as well.
     Like the other day I was reading the scriptures, then a thought pulled my brain away from what i was reading, then one thought lead to another and here i am reading the bible, thinking about the Cookie Monster!

[Don't judge me, I'm going somewhere with this.]

     We as humans have basic desires and instincts that come with our bodies. We cannot control them. But we can control how we react towards them. "Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions." -Elder Dalin H. Oaks. We call this "the natural man" [or the natural gal] The scriptures help us understand this principle. From the Book of Mormon we read:

     "19For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord..."

~Mosiah 3:19

Example:
     The Cookie Monster is a character on the children's show "Sesame Street". He is notorious for having an insatiable appetite for cookies and exercising incorrect usage of grammar. "Me want cookies!" is his famous eating catch phrase, as well as "Om nom nom nom" [said through a mouthful of cookies]  The Cookie Monster is NOT a good example of resisting the natural man. We know he does not use table manners, talks with his mouth full, and doesn't use correct forms of the word, "I" when appropriate. But i'd venture to say that he has broken all 10 of Gods commandments, as delivered through Moses, as ways to obtain more cookies! He, seemingly, worships cookies, he'd steal cookies, maybe even kill for cookies, he lusts after them, he'd bare false witness to get more cookies, and covets other peoples cookies to be his own.... Just to name a few!

How this actually applys':

     We can see from other peoples choices what can happen if we don't resist the natural man. But it all begins with our desires. If we take our desires away from "natural man" things like our addictions [in this case cookies:P] and turn them to "Jesus Christ" things, we can improve the quality of our lives and make ourselves more happy. Through the help of the Lord, and our own effort, we can keep our desires focused on good things that keep us in line with gods commandments. We can "Putteth off the natural man" and recieve the joy and happieness that follows. I know this is true!