Little Chats With God

Posts Tagged ‘spiritual life’

“If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people.”  Micah 2:11Micah 2:11
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11 If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood lies: ‘I will prophesy to you of wine and of strong drink;’ He would be the prophet of this people.

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Lord, I really do wonder about Your people sometimes! In that book I read recently the author talks about this young guy who decided that going to church was too hard. Instead, he was going to go water skiing. He collected a few mates to go out on the river for the day. I guess they felt that because it was Sunday, they had to do something “religious”, so they read a couple of verses of Your Word, talked about it briefly, said a few prayers. Then they went off to worship their true god, fun. Soon others joined them in their church of fun. The writer makes the point that they shared the Gospel with these new recruits, and many of them accepted Jesus, and he sees this as an ideal example of the new way of “doing church.”

Excuse me, Lord, but am I missing something here? I seem to recall You saying something about people taking up their cross to follow You, not taking up their water skis. Somehow I thought that the commitment You require was a little deeper than a few verses of Scripture and a brief prayer (of course for the needs of the individuals concerned.)

Not that there is anything wrong with water skiing – or any of the other pleasurable activities of this life – but when those things take the place of our commitment to You, I find it hard to draw any other conclusion than that they, rather than You, have become the object of worship.

Of course, this kind of Gospel would be really easy to spread. I mean, how difficult can it be to recruit people who are only interested in having fun? It makes Your words about counting the cost seem like so much codswallop. If that’s what Your Kingdom is all about, Lord, then why didn’t You just throw a big party? Yet as I read the Gospels, it seems to me that pretty much the whole of Your ministry on earth was spent challenging people to deeper faith, deeper commitment, deeper preparedness to pay the price. That, and getting up the religious authorities’ noses in such a way that it would lead eventually to You paying the ultimate price.

Lord, if You had been living on earth at the beginning of the 21st century, I can imagine You going water skiing with Your friends. I just can’t see You doing it as a substitute for the deeper spiritual exercises of life.

This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.

There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
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5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
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9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,

WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
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9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

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“Sow for yourselves in righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unploughed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness on you.” Hosea 10:12Hosea 10:12
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12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, Reap according to kindness. Break up your fallow ground; For it is time to seek Yahweh, Until he comes and rains righteousness on you.

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Lord, I remember reading somewhere that the word translated “unploughed” here does not mean ground that has never been ploughed, but that which was once cultivated but has been allowed to lie fallow. What was once fruitful has become hard and overrun with weeds.

It seems to me, Lord, that there are areas in my life that are like that. Things which were once a normal part of my walk with You, but seem to have gone AWOL. Things that I really would like to be part of my Christian experience again.

But it’s so hard to go back, Lord. Time, hurts, disappointments, have conspired together to harden the soil of my heart. Now bad habits grow like weeds, and the fruitfulness for Your Kingdom in those areas has been choked out.

I know I need to revisit those areas, Lord. To break up the ground again. To allow the rain of Your Spirit to soften me again. To rip out the weeds, and allow Your Spirit to again plant the seeds of Your Kingdom. I know it, Lord. It’s doing it that’s the hard bit.

I guess there’s a lot of others in the same place, Lord. We need you to do what the last part of this verse says. We need You to come and shower righteousness upon us. We need You to strengthen and encourage us, so that we can again take up the plough, and again become fruitful for You.