BUT A POOR REFLECTION: Complacent to God

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Complacent to God

We’re complacent to God. Churchgoers pack the pews and sing to the back of someone’s head. Fellowship is lost in formality. One, two, three times a week people pay their dues by walking in the door, enduring a ritual, and walking out. Guilt is appeased. God is insulted. Are we so naive as to think that he needs our attendance? Are we so ignorant that we put God in a box, thinking he can be taken in and out at our convenience?

Max Lucado, On the Anvil, p. 26, Tyndale 1985

2 comments:

Cori said...: I sometimes find myself thinking during a church service: Here was two hours of a group of people who claim to follow Jesus sitting in these pews who COULD have been out there transforming their community. I don't know if thats what you meant in this post but I sometimes wonder about sitting in pews on a Sunday thinking that THAT is what worshipping God is all about...; 8/04/2008 8:46 am
Anonymous said...: Worship is not something we do, it is something we offer. We offer God our praise and thanksgiving for all that he has done through Christ. Worship is also a communal event during which the saints gather in community; the community instituted by God for the purposes of strengthing and nourishing one another.

In a sense, I disagree with Lucado in that we ought not be niave to think God wants us to gather for worship. Even Jesus gathered with the community, family and friends for the very ylsame purpose.

Where we fall short is making that hour or two on Sunday our only offering to God. Living the Christian life means living for God each and every moment. It is so easy to give in to a world of empty promise. This is why we depend on the community of the church. we are to hold one another accountable to living out the gospel.; 8/05/2008 1:09 pm

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God loves us

Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and grey; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But he didn’t. He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too. Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way that chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rings? Why give a flower fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be he loves to see that look upon your face?

Max Lucado - He Chose the Nails

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I do not condemn theologians wholesale, but it is unfortunately the fashion in Western thinking to doubt and deny everything. I protest this tendency. I never advise anyone to consult theologians, because all too often they have completely lost all sense of spiritual reality. They can explain Greek words and all that, but they spend too much time among their books and not enough time with the Master in prayer. It is not that I oppose all education, but education without life is certainly dangerous. You must stop examining spiritual truths like dry bones! You must break open the bones and take in the life-giving marrow.

Oswald Chambers

In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. "The clouds are the dust of His feet" (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, July 29th)