Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


7.07.2004  

No joke

So it's been a while since I've last posted anything. Whew...life's been kinda crazy, in a somewhat uneventful sort of way. Does that make sense? Probably not :) Allow me to explain...



The summer has been full of work. On average, somewhere between fifty to sixty hours a week, and I don't think I've gone one single week this summer under forty hours, between my two jobs. Take for instance, last Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. That ended up being a seventeen hour shift. Yiiiiikes.



Thus, after all the hours at work, and all the hours spent trying to avoid the draining monotony of "just work," there hasn't been a lot of time to just sit down at a computer terminal and blog. Bummer. Still, that's not to say that God isn't teaching me and growing me...I just wish I were better at the learning, you know?



I was just telling Jared this morning that I feel lukewarm. Gah. What horrible word! Unless you're talking about bathing a baby, or pulling a practical joke on a sleeping friend, the word lukewarm has such a horrible connotation to it. And you know what? Rightly so. I find myself nibbling at God. I explained it to Jared like this. In the morning, when I go to "meet with Jesus," I'll sit down with him at the table. When we begin our conversation, I'm clearly distracted. I keep glancing up at the clock, I respond to what He's saying with a lot of uh huh's or, yeah...I already knew that's. But you know what? If God is the one teaching me, He knows precisely what I need to hear, and what I must learn. So why don't I listen? Quite simply, I don't really want to. I mean, I'll sit there just enough to check off from my daily list, "met with the Lord," but it's only that. A check on the list. It's like what James said about the whole looking in the mirror thing. I've noticed that when I go through times like this, times when I'm lukewarm, I'll not find myself pondering over the Scriptures I read that day, or that week, or even any Scripture at all. I'll find myself looking back throughout the day, trying to remember whether or not I did my devotions. Lukewarm, indeed.



The passage I read this morning came from Hebrews 10. In particular, verses 29 - 31 hit me hard:



How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE." It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.



Ouch. Here, the author is not talking about believers, but unbelievers...those who've heard the gospel and have still rejected Christ. Or, as verses 38 and 39 put it, those who "shrink back" from Christ and go to their destruction. Yet, the believer is also being warned, for it would not serve us well not to be mindful of the wrath that awaits those who take lightly the blood of Christ. The question I must ask myself this morning is, "how do I trample upon the Son of God, regard as unclean His sanctifying blood, or insult His gracious Spirit?" The answer to that right now? My lukewarmness.



Last Wednesday, I did something I hadn't done in over four years. I preached. It wasn't something that I had been expecting to happen, especially with my crazy work schedule. Still, Keith asked me to do it for our youth service, and so I said, "uhhh...ok." 2 Samuel 6:1 - 9 was the main text. We took a look at the attempted move of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The focus was on Uzzah, and his irreverence...our irreverence. One of the things I tried to make clear to the kids was this: Uzzah was struck down because he forgot exactly who he was, and who God is. It says that God's anger burned against Uzzah for his irreverence. And all he did was touch the Ark when it was about to fall over!



*Sigh*...it seems like so very often, I am like Uzzah. I reach out and touch God, forgetting who I am. More importantly, I forget who God is. In my lukewarm laziness, I come into the presence of God with a casual nonchalance that tramples the Son underfoot. You know, it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.





posted by Bolo | 10:36 AM
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