Is It Possible?
In Christ, everyday is a learning experience. Everyday in which something or someone moves across our paths is an opportunity. Each day that comes and goes presents itself with choices, choices that we often choose incorrectly.
Is it possible to become lost in our religion? Now to clarify, do I mean lost as in not saved or lost as in I don’t know the way? Yes! We can become lost individuals who practice many of the principles of God and totally ignore the things that matter most, resulting in a life lived in unbelief. We can also become too intrenched in our way of doing things that we completely lose our direction toward God.
You see, every one of us struggle with what goes on in our heads and in our hearts. Some struggle and keep the path. Others struggle and make their own path, because it seems right. We are humbled by the Scripture from time to time, remembering that “it is not in man to direct his own path.”
Is it possible to learn and grow in the knowledge of the Lord and still miss the mark? Is it possible to fall into complacency because we are making some sort of effort, convincing ourselves that all is well?
If a person has been attacked by some offender, clothes ripped off lying there in their nakedness for all to see, bleeding profusely in the neck from stab wounds to the jugular vein, what should I do? Would I rush to cover their nakedness. Would God want me to do that for that person? Covering nakedness is important to the person and to God. Or, should I attend the wound, applying pressure to hopefully keep them from bleeding to death until medical help could arrive? Both issues are very important. But, is one more critical than the other?
You see, covering their nakedness will not save their life. It will save their dignity, but dignity will not keep the critical blood flow to the body. However, applying pressure to the most important vein in the body would be a critical issue.
Our religion is often like that. We busy ourselves doing the important while, at the same time, ignoring the critical issues of our relationship with God. In some sense, we find ourselves lost in our own religion. Our mind and our hearts tell us we are doing well, but the result is a dying, lifeless corpse.
Is it possible to go through the motions of lifestyle worship and never touch God? Can we touch the lives of others, administering the grace of God in their lives and do it with such emptiness that God is not even present in our situation. Can God work through that? Yes! Can others benefit from that? Yes! But, does it lift our hearts in adoration and deep conviction to Almighty God? What do you think here?
God calls us on purpose and gives each of us His purpose. For you and I to work outside of that is a senseless wandering. Religion is a “binding to God.” And, if our religion does not bind us to Him, it is shallow and empty. It has all the motions but not the heart. God wants to live in us and walk this earth in us. He is not interested in mindless wandering. He wants our hands, our hearts and our feet to have a purpose… His purpose. He wants our hands to be His hands and our words to be His words. He wants our faith in Him to be an expression of Him living in us.
I want all of us to begin considering who we are and where we are in relation to Him. Why do I do what I do in His name? Why do I go where I go in His name? When I speak, is it Him speaking through me or is it me looking good?
There is no more helpless feeling in this world than the feeling you get when you are lost. I’ve been lost in the woods before while squirrel hunting. Not watching where I was going and keeping track in a strange place, I wandered for hours with a hopeless heart trying to find my way back. All I could think about was my safety and my return. I was no longer interested in doing what I came there to do. Squirrels could have run me down and I would not have fired a shot. I was scared and hopeless and that feeling directed every step I made through the rest of the whole experience. It was not until I put my foot on familiar ground that my fear went away. But do you know what? I still quit hunting because I did not want to repeat what I had just experienced.
I wonder if we are like that? We stay with what is familiar and comfortable, fearing that one more step in another direction may bring back that helpless, hopeless feeling. We will walk the safe, comfortable paths that do not challenge us because we are afraid of getting lost in something we do not know.
But, do you know the sad part? When a hunter quits hunting because he is lost in the woods, he has lost his real purpose. You cannot be a hunter if you do not hunt. You can have the gun and the shells, but you are now a gun and shell toter… not a hunter.
Is it possible that some of us are toting some of the things of God and yet, not fulfilling our real purpose? I don’t know about you, but I am finding myself there. Now, I have a choice. I can live with it or I can do something about it. I know what I will choose, what about you?
I Love You,