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| Photo courtesy of shereadstruth.com |
Hello to you, dear friend! I am writing this morning out of a personal confession...and a greater lamenting over our current American Christian culture at large...
Let me explain.
So often, I am drawn to things that inspire. Beautiful things. Meaningful things. Things that smack of spirituality...and yet are not. I want to surround myself with spiritual "stuff"...and yet neglect the things that are truly spiritual, because those things are hard, unglamorous, and monotonous at times. Take the mug pictured above. I saw this mug online yesterday (shereadstruth.com) and was totally enamored by it. Now with a hefty price tag of $20 (before shipping!) I hesitated. But later as I was recalling this mug to mind (hello...beautiful! You had me with the graphic text and clean lines...) I thought about how I NEEDED it. Wouldn't it be the perfect addition to my life as I wake up each morning and fling open the Word of God...while brewing my perfect cup of joe into this inspirational mug? Now, mind you there was a still small voice inside me too, that said Twenty dollars??!! Couldn't you instead be a woman that provides God's Truth and use that money to support Bible translation?...**
But I squelched that little voice like a bug...because aren't I a girl about whom it should be said, "she reads truth?"
Sadly, I scoped out the mug again the next day...and saw that it was sold out. (I am convinced that the Lord in His Sovereign wisdom KNEW I'd go back and was merciful enough to intervene--haha!). So what did I do? What any consumer-driven person does when things sell out online...I checked out ebay...and again, nothing! Ugh.
So here I am, penning this post sipping my coffee in my plain blue mug, realizing that once again, I have chased something that has the appearance of spirituality, but is devoid of truth. I might read the truth...I might know the truth...I might even believe the truth...but do I live the truth and is it all-sufficient for me? Why do I want to add material things to God? Why do I want to over-resource myself with books, study guides, music, journals...when all I need is the Word? Sometimes it just seems so unglamorous. Hard. Boring. And I am inclined to add all the frills.
I think we all do this to a large extent in the North American church today. I look in the Scriptures when Ezra the priest preached to the returning Jewish exiles in the book of Nehemiah. He literally stood outside atop a wooden platform and read aloud God's law from early morning to midday in the presence of all the men and women who were old enough to understand. And what was the congregation's response? Scripture tells us "the ears of all the people were attentive" (Neh 8:3)...."All the people answered, 'Amen, Amen,' lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground" (v. 6). A few verses later, we see the people weep over their sins (v. 9). This is a truly spiritual worship service, people! I honestly have never seen a worship service like this in my lifetime. To today's church it might appear boring...devoid of a choir, instruments, lights, video clips, coffee and doughnuts, announcements of exciting upcoming events. But what matters IS present--God's Word, receptive listeners, and the Spirit at work convicting sin and transforming lives and hearts!
So I challenge myself, and you, dear friend, to keep this in mind this week. Let's be content to do some good ol' Bible reading...without the frills of glossy study guides, prayer journals, and beautiful coffee mugs. Let's get down on our knees and pray...and set aside all those books that tell us how or why we should pray (but steal away our time from actually doing it!). Let's do the unglamorous work of reading, praying, hearing, and obeying God, even when we will never be noticed for it! For this is where the true power of God resides!
**check out Wycliffe Bible Translators--$25 goes to provide 15 copies of the Gospel of Luke in 4 different languages!! (and yes, that check is going out in the mail today!)
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