In the past few articles I talked about how we have neglected our primary mission field because we have turned our mission field into a comfortable home that we do not want to risk loosing or downgrading. And I mentioned that instead of spending all of our time on the mission we distract ourselves with games, movies, and entertainment and just doing things that keep the focus on us.
The answer, though, is not to give away all of your stuff, cancel your cable TV, and spend all of your time at the local food pantry volunteering and never have any fun again.
That is because those issues are not the problem, they are just the symptoms.
It is like when you get sick, running a fever and coughing so much you cannot sleep. The fever and the coughing are not the problem. The problem is that you have a virus running through you destroying your body. The coughing and fever are just the symptoms, the signs that you have a problem.
Likewise, the fact that we spend all of this time focused on ourselves and our wants, focusing on our desires for now instead of the future in eternity, they are just a symptom; a sign that says we have something much deeper wrong.
There are two problems which are related to each other.
- We lack an understanding of how much God loves us
- We are not in love with God
according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:16-19
A lot of times we as Christians (or just as humans) find things wrong with our lives and we want to fix them ourselves. We know we are not tithing enough so we try harder, we know we have too much stuff so we discipline ourselves more and drop the stuff we think is hindering us. We come up with lists and plans and accountability groups and fasts and all these actions to make us act better.
But the true issue is that we have not fallen in love with God.
I cannot say or do anything to make you fall in love with Jesus just like I cannot make you fall in love with any person. If you fall in love or not is dependent on you and how much you see and reflect God’s love towards you.
All I can do is make the introduction, but after I introduce you to Jesus – the creator of the universe who was beaten, bled and died because He loves you so much He doesn’t want you to pay the penalty of your own sins against Him – after I make that introduction, you will either fall in love with Him and bow down before Him, or you will just say “meh, that’s cool” and continue on with your life. The only thing I can do on a continual basis is pray for your heart to change towards Him and keep reminding you that He is there.
And that’s hard for me. I created Eternal Truth Ministry to share Christ with as many people as I could, and to know that nothing I say can persuade you to follow Christ, that in the end it is still up to you to fall in love with Jesus, is hard.
I say that this issue is the root cause of why we do not care about our mission field here because once you get it, once you see and understand how much God loves you and once you fall in love with Him in return, then you don’t need to be told that you spend too much time on unimportant things. You do not need to be told this because your love for God will drive you to want to fulfill His mission for you on Earth.
Once you realize how much God really loves you, then you will want to share that love with others more than sit in front of the TV watching Big Bang Theory, Family Guy, or American Idol.
Related articles
- Attitude of Surrender (roseealimon.wordpress.com)
- R-12 Are you trying hard but feeling guilty? (whenhetalkstome.wordpress.com)
