No time for God, but I love to "worship" Him!

I starting reading through 1 Samuel a couple of days ago, and it was noteworthy to me that “in those days messages from the Lord were very rare.” (1 Samuel 3:1) The crazy thing is, I believe we often consider this to be the case today. It isn’t!

In contrast to the time in which 1 Samuel was penned, we have two things that those people didn’t: 1) the written, living Word of God, and 2) the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amazing, isn’t it?! We very literally have the Words of the Creator of the universe at our fingertips – you probably even have several versions lying around your house. And we have the Spirit of the living God within us! Stunning!

So, how often do you dig into what God says in His book? Easily nine out of 10 times I ask this of Christian brothers or sisters, I get the answer, nearly verbatim, “Not as much as I should.”

Kudos for honesty, but is that really an acceptable answer for a follower of Christ? When we say Jesus Christ is our Savior and Lord, would we be more honest if we left off that pesky “Lord” part? Is this how we’re going to see the power of God in our families and in our communities? If we aren’t going to allow Him to be the consuming fire in our lives, will He hopefully go on to the next person?

I’m a little bit puzzled. I’m curious as to how we can realistically believe that we can come to services on a Sunday after this kind of thing...

• not cracking our Bible since the previous Sunday
• barely even thinking about our Redeemer all week
• ignoring what Jesus said about turning the other cheek and serving others
• leaving God out of the major and minor decisions we’ve made during the week

...and then expect to “worship” – ascribe worth to – God in a "worship service". We don’t really believe that’s possible, do we? Having been a member of the Baptist Church since very nearly before I was born, I can confidently say that we apparently do believe it’s possible, because we’ve practiced it regularly for a very long time.

Please, join me in implementing change in these areas in God’s Church. It's simply ludicrous to imagine that we're going to see God move through His Church in awesome power and might when His Church can't seem to find five minutes to bother with Him throughout the week.

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And the Actual Retail Price is...

If someone told you that you could pay them $20 to make your next hour of work -- around the office, the house, at school, or whatever -- more enjoyable, would you take them up on it?

Most mornings I stop by Starbuck's and get a venti White Chocolate Mocha, and I pay $4.70 for it. That's really a lot of money for 15 minutes' worth of enjoyment. I make a conscious decision to trade money for pleasure. The coffee, or the enjoyment it brings, is worth more to me than my $4.70, so I part with my cash in order to get it.

Jesus once said to a large crowd of people following Him, "But don’t begin [to follow Me] until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?" (Luke 14:28, NLT)

I'm not sure many people actually do that. How many of us have made the conscious choice, "Okay, in order to follow Christ, I'm taking everything about me and everything I own and I'm counting it to be absolutely worthless compared to following Jesus. If there's ever a choice between personal pleasure or convenience and following Christ, I'll choose the latter"? Instead, I believe our standardized way of "accepting Jesus" means to most people, "I can now add heaven to the things that I'm entitled to, and going to 'church' will make me feel better about myself."

How many of us really, truly think that it's going to cost us everything to follow Jesus Christ? If we thought that, would we have been willing to make the commitment?

I think a real-world example would be someone doing a cost summary for a prototype project (this is pretty common in Huntsville, AL). The prototype used, let's say, 20 gaskets that were normally $200.00 each, but they were EOL (end-of-life) so the distributor gave them to you for $25.00 each. Your boss tells you to cost them at $2,000 total, but you know your cost was $500. This is pretty black-and-white, and you can do what you know to be right or you can begin to rationalize in this kind of way: "The Bible says, 'Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people,'" so I should look at what my boss says as though it were coming from God, so I'd better cost them at $2,000." Is that the correct course of action?

How in the world could following Jesus possibly cost us everything? If we lived in a country that persecutes Christians, that's easy to see. But how about daily life in America? Is following Christ "costing" you anything? Are you willing for it to cost you your job? Are you willing for it to cost you your health insurance? Your big screen TV?

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