Faith Firmly Rooted

You make your choices and your choices make you.  Why miss out on what God desires for you?  Make sure that Jesus Christ is driving behind the wheel of your life...your drive will be difficult but beautiful.  It will be a rush of joy not to mention an unfathomably awesome final destination!  The best is always yet to come for the Christian.

The Main Thing...is to Keep Christ Central and Foremost.  All else is folly.

[The current topic relates back to a previous post I made a long time ago.]


What would it take to make your spiritual life your number one priority?


For many of us, the question is almost offensive. I've even heard it asked, "How would your life look differently if you really began to obey God's word and live it out as though it were true?"


The question may be offensive, but it is one we must daily ask ourselves if we want to take Jesus' words seriously.  For real...what's your #1?  Do you seek Christ, knowing Him, honoring Him, knowing His will and doing it above everything else?  Do it and you'll find that everything else suddenly comes into focus, priorities find their proper place, and things are rightly aligned.  Jesus spoke of this when he said:

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Mt. 6:33

          and

"The most important [commandment],” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’" Mk 12:29-30 

Spiritual self-examination is so very Biblical. When was the last time you did a spiritual pulse-check?  Don't wait 'til your life is already wrecked to give God first place.  A great starting point is Psalm 119.



Get alone somehow with God today and pray this prayer: 


"Search me, Oh God and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me into the way everlasting..."  (Ps. 119)


-RCW

I hope you are enjoying the recent series of posts regarding reading and learning as a part of healthy growth in the Christian faith.  If you are, I hate to break it to you, but this entry is only minimally related to that topic.

My wife is about 2 weeks from her due date.  We are welcoming our first child into this world in just a handful of days.  It's truly a wonderful, scary, and exciting time.  And although I did read a great book in the early months that helped me tremendously to process the reality that I was going to be a dad, my emotions (as well as my wife's) have been all over the place.
 
But aside from my wife and I's own prayerful anxiety about bringing a daughter into this world, the real story is --- well, our daughter.  In less than a couple of weeks, a new life will emerge from our lives.  She will be --- all at once --- her mother and me.  This new bundle of joy is going to be welcomed into our family and is going to experience real life!  What a miracle!

But here is what I have been thinking of today... What if my daughter never grew?  What if we fed her and loved her and did everything we could to help her develop as she ought, and she simply wouldn't grow?  God forbid it, but would that not be awful?  It would be an unbelievable abnormality that would very likely put her life itself in serious jeopardy.

But the gripping fact is that Christians do the same thing all the time.  And frequently, churches don't do much to help.  A person might make a decision, walk an aisle, check a box, or pray a prayer...in some way he or she accepts Jesus Christ and enters into new life in Christ.  Hooray!  We have a new creation!  A spiritual infant has been "born again" into God's family!  (Is this not the very Biblical metaphor that Jesus used?)  What an amazing miracle!  And yet, most will stagnate.  Most will not grow.  Most will remain spiritual babes.  Most will seldom nourish themselves with the scriptures, pray, or serve God with any consistency.  Worse still, a few weeks, months, or years may pass so that being still infants in Christ, they begin to wonder why their life isn't all that much different.  They may even seriously question their original decision or feel duped by those that offered them this "new life" in Christ.  It happens ALL.....THE.......TIME. 

I personally work for a church.  If I were to summarize my role there, I'd say my job is to help Christian adults grow and develop in their faith.  Would it surprise you if I told you that I tend to desire the spiritual growth of those adults far more than they desire it?  (This is not a slam to the church I work at...it is simply a statement of the actuality that faces most congregations in the U.S.).  
 
So how can you start growing? Here's a great starting point:

1. Get a good Bible.  Read it regularly, take notes, write down what you learn and what questions you have, even underline and memorize the verses that strike you as worth memorizing.
2. Ask God to help you grow, believe that He'll bring it about, and desire it more than anything else.
3. Plug into an authentic Biblical community that strives to help you spiritually develop.  Get to know a few committed Christians within that community that you can tell are serious about their relationship with God and live it out in all they do.
4. Begin to use and even leverage your natural abilities, skills, gifts, possessions, time, finances, and your whole self to be a part of spreading the good news about Christ and living out your faith with everything God gives you.  In short, serve God and be a steward of what He's given you so that you might bring Him glory. 

If you already feel like you've done the above, check yourself.  Ask yourself these tough questions and answer honestly:

1. When was the last time I spent time reading my Bible?  Am I faithfully involved in personal Bible study and time alone with God?  Have I read any spiritually nourishing material lately?
2. How much time do I spend in prayer?  Do I talk to God about everything?  Do I talk to God throughout the day?  Or do I simply reserve prayer for before meals, at church, before bed, etc.?  When I do pray, do I just ask him for stuff I want, or do I actually have a real relationship with Him that goes beyond that type of interaction?
3. Is my church committed to seeing me grow spiritually?  Do they care as much about turning me into a faithful and authentic follower of Christ as they do about seeing new people pray the same prayer I did to receive Christ?  Have I sought and found Biblical community within my local church?  Have I involved myself with other believers and developed strong relationships there or have I been passive and retreated from being known by others?  Is the Biblical community I am involved with at church really serious about growing or are we just a social group that seems stuck and apathetic?
4. Finally, how am I serving and being a steward?  Am I giving faithfully of my time, talents, money, and energy to see God's rule and reign in the hearts and lives of others?  Or am I holding back and sitting on the sidelines?  What more could I be doing to further God's work in my church, in my community, and in my world?
5. If people followed me around all day every day for a month, would my life clearly tell them that I am a follower of Christ who reflects who He is?

-RCW

I have already received some feedback from my post yesterday.

First, the person brought to my attention how ridiculously long the entry was. (A realization that I already had observed for myself).  My sincere apologies for being so verbose.  :)

Next, the person said that as they read, they could see where my agenda was headed.

This has prompted me to clarify that I did not aim to poke fun, be rude, or mock Christians (much).  I can do this because I am one.  Rather, my posting was a way of bringing into focus for both myself and others that which is truly essential for the new believer.  We try all too often to make certain things important that are not.  We expect a new Christian to suddenly follow a long list of dos and don'ts that (to us) are basic or inherent for someone who wants to follow Christ.  It was my purpose to challenge all of us to think about what is essential for the early stages of someone's discipleship.


 
-RCW