I’m grateful for my cell. They are people full of opinions and questions, they listen and they share as we live trying to be together, following Jesus on mission.
Yesterday was the National Day of Prayer, and something subtle-seeming set me off. The theme for the day was “Prayer! America’s strength and shield”. It sounds vaguely Christian, right? You might even think that it’s basically what the King David wrote in Psalm 28 (the theme verse) “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.”
Big difference between the theme and the theme verse, I noticed. The LORD was substituted with the word prayer.
This got me thinking, what else do we substitute for God? Could it be that we even use good things that we do to try to fill parking spaces reserved for God?
It’s easy for us to trade justification for being in love (with Christ). We’ll use all kinds of other things: substances, affirmation from people, success at our job, comfort, sense of safety…we also will substitute a sense of justification where we feel good enough about ourselves (or bad enough) to not need to be in love.
When we are in love with Jesus, we are justified, life is full of color, and the closeness we have is so sweet that there is no substitute. My hope is that we would live as lovers of Jesus who would be excited to develop that closeness and celebrate the transformation that comes with it in us and in the world.
Yeah! That’s it dude, I’m always trying to figure out how to avoid substituting stuff for God. For me, one of my distractions might be talking too much about how to connect to God, and not doing enough of actual time alone with God. thanks for bringing that up.
I really wonder why we are so inclined to trade things for Jesus. I think I’ve settled on the idea that it’s hard to be a Christian. It’s hard to relinquish power and control. It’s hard to submit fully. It’s easier for us to replace Jesus with things that we think we control. We want to be our own bosses. I pray that we keep trying to fall deeper in love with Jesus personally and as a community.