Louie Giglio's little book, “The
Air I Breathe” made an impression on me. The book is a discussion of worship, and at
the heart of worship is attitude. Early on Louie notes how casually we
go about coming to a worship service. More often than not, a stop at the church
is sandwiched in between any number of other commitments from a stop at the café,
to a post church lunch or brunch, then to the mall, the movies, or the ballfield.
These additional stops are issues of conscience. If you can conscience a stop at
Barnes and Noble on the way home from church, then more power to you. But if
you are sitting through service, wondering if they have any cool new Doctor
Who stuff since the last time you were there, you should be paying attention
to the service! And that is part of the problem nowadays. We sort of cram
church in to our already distracted schedule.
I am well aware of dangers of
equating church attendance with spiritual maturity and devotion, what we are
talking about here is something more.
When you are in worship, are you
there?
How did you prepare before you get there?
If you are not there, invested, the question becomes, “Why
did you come?” We should try to make the best of that time.
Guard your steps, as in, don’t just
run in talking away on your mobile or whatever. Take a breath, put your device
and you on airplane mode, and head in to worship and revere God. While I am on
the subject, I wonder if some times, we spend too much time talking to one
another at church and not enough time talking to God.
If we come to God, to make a
request, or a vow, etc. even though he knows our thoughts, we should think the
thing through, and bring it to God in a manner worthy of Him. God will hear a “quick
prayer” as we call it where I live, typically full of fillers like, “Um” and “Lord
God”, but shouldn’t we give more consideration
as we approach the Creator?
And I am just as guilty, certainly talking
to myself here, and using too many words to do so!
Our society prizes people who spew
like a fire hydrant
without the cap on. God wishes for us to reason out what we are going to say,
to one another, to him, and to be careful to recall that “where there are many
words, transgression is unavoidable.”
When you do make a vow, keep it. Even
if it is difficult to keep. I would hope that very few times in my life have I renegotiated
or left a vow unfulfilled. God help me if it was to Him. But we so often do vow
to God, or to our church, or to others. When you make a vow, keep it. It is better
to not vow, than to vow and not pay; otherwise there will be consequences.
Verses 3 and 7 are linked. There
are more than a few daydreamers out there. They hope that their dreaming will
bring about what they want more than work. Talk, and dream all you want, but it
is work and God’s blessing that bring reward.
No comments:
Post a Comment