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Immanuel Baptist "On the Journey" Articles |
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On the Journey- January 19, 2005-
Jamie Broome
Beware the Familiar
When you
have been going to church most of your life, you can get confused about
some of the most essential elements of the Christian faith. Actually, we
become too familiar with holy things. The words of faith become so
common to us that they lose their power to transform our lives. In fact,
we find ourselves using a vocabulary that sounds soothing in our ears,
but the words do not touch our souls. It seems we run the risk of
getting too comfortable in God’s presence, and, therefore, our
relationship with God becomes distorted. In time, we are tempted to
believe we are in control of this relationship.
One example
of this confusion involves a decision we make every Sunday to gather
with the people of faith to worship God or to make other plans for the
day. We are tempted to see worship as a come and go affair. It seems to
us that nothing is really at stake on Sunday morning. We have no sense
that worship is a divine appointment. Rather we see ourselves making a
simple decision about how we will spend our day. Perhaps our week was
stressful, and we decide we need a quiet morning to do nothing. Maybe
our week was filled with more activities than we could get in, and we
feel the entire family needs a little down time. Before long, our needs
become the focus of our Sunday. We say to ourselves, “God will
understand.” But does he?
Familiarity
breeds misunderstanding. Most of us are familiar with the parables Jesus
told about the lost sheep and the lost coin. He says that God is like a
shepherd who discovers at the end of the day that one of his lambs has
wandered off and gotten lost. God leaves the 99 sheep in the wilderness
to search high and low for the one he has lost. He risks everything.
Jesus says God is like a woman who loses a coin. She empties her house.
The furniture is pulled out on the lawn. She sweeps the floor and rolls
up the rugs until the coin is found. In these parables, God is on a
relentless search. He is searching for us. When we are found, we belong
to him. We are his possession. In our confusion, we come to believe that
we set the terms of our relationship with God.
When we are
confused about our relationship with God, we find ourselves making all
kinds of inappropriate assumptions. Faith becomes a game we play with
God. We are challenged by this game because we want to appear faithful
people while escaping the demands and sacrifices of a life committed to
God. The games we play are legion. We value knowledge about the Bible.
In fact, we search for stimulating Bible studies that offer practical
applications for our lives, and, then, we ignore the applications. Faith
becomes a matter of knowledge not a matter of living. For example, take
what we know about forgiveness. Jesus is clear in his teaching on this
matter. There is nothing ambiguous. We will be forgiven in the same way
we forgive. If a brother or sister sins against us, we are to forgive 77
times. If we do not forgive others their sins, then our sins will not be
forgiven. Yet, forgiveness is a very rare thing among Christians as rare
as a confession of sins.
With our
familiarity, we can also deceive ourselves. In church, we learned about
the tithe as children. We learned that a tithe is calculated as a gift
of 10% of our wealth. We were taught that God expects a tithe from us.
When we were young, we gave a dime out of every dollar of our
allowance. Yet, as we become adults, we come to the conclusion that God
does not care about what we do with our money. We see no contradiction
in asking God for his blessings while spending all of our money on
ourselves. Research done by George Barna in 2002 uncovered the
disturbing statistic that only 6% of believers identifying themselves
“born again” tithed. This statistic is indicative of our confusion
because while playing the game at church we never indicate that we give
less than our tithe.
Our
familiarity with the words of faith sometimes leads us to confuse such
common terms as sin and grace. Today many Christians are reluctant to
name sins for what they are—sin. Somehow, we have come to believe that a
gracious God simply ignores our sin. We are offended when someone
refuses to dismiss our sin labeling him or her judgmental. The
inescapable consequences of our sins seem unfair to us. Yet, the witness
of scripture is clear—we must confess our sins and live lives worthy of
repentance to experience the power of forgiveness.
I guess we
need to remember that we are in a personal relationship with God. God
chose to become personal when he came to us in Jesus Christ. Personal
encounters are rarely abstract. Personal relationships are jeopardized
by taking things for granted. Perhaps we need to attempt to see our
decisions, actions, and attitudes from God’s perspective. Better, would
we be content if someone defined his or her relationship with us the way
we define our relationship to God? Let’s be aware of the confusion
familiarity breeds.
jamie
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Website last updated: Wednesday, February 2, 2005 Website Related Questions/Comments: Chris Cash-ccash@vci.net |
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Immanuel Baptist Church - 3465 Buckner Lane - Paducah, KY, 42001 - 270.443.5306 - www.immanuel-paducah.org |