Bored with God?
Encouragement for Your Heart and Mind from Pastor David Staff
Because our 2nd car – one which we’ve owned for a dozen years or more – deserved to get some T.L.C. from a local auto repair shop, I brought my Yamaha 1300 Tourer Cruiser to Cañon City this week. More than once my bride has heard me remark: “Have I ever told you how much I love my motorcycle?”
She smiles. But always with a look of “Be careful!” in her eyes.
On Tuesday for breakfast, I indulged my morning with a ride via C115 to Florence. Someone urged me to find “the best” coffee shop there, which I took to be the Aspen Leaf Bakery and Café. The recommendation was on target. Try the Burrito with a steaming cup of ‘Joe.
It was also a time for me to hear from the Lord. A few minutes reflecting on Colossians 4, listening to the Apostle Paul commend his colleagues in ministry – Tychicus, newly converted Onesimus, Aristarchus who was sharing Paul’s chains, Mark, Justus, the prayer warrior Epaphras, beloved Dr. Luke, and Demas. Faithful-to-one-another Christians make a great Kingdom team.
THE DANGER OF FAMILIARITY
Moments later, what arrested my attention were words found in Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling, Chapter 8, entitled “Familiarity.” Tripp recalls a conversation with the head of a national Christian ministry, who candidly confessed “I don’t think anything excites me any more.” A bit stunned, Tripp thought, “You’d better be excited. You are leading a ministry, and if you can’t get your excitement back, maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing.”
Then Paul Tripp adds, “What a sad and dangerous place to be.”
I resonate with this warning. Too often, I talk with Christians who are excited about everything else except their walk with God. Idol-like substitutes include their recent cruise, their new lake home, their favorite sports team, or (dare I say it) one’s new motorcycle.
But try to shift the conversation to what God is doing in one’s life, and the excitement evaporates. No new discovery in the Word from the voice of the Spirit. No new opportunity to love someone outside of Christ and share the good news with him or her. No importunate prayer for a nearby struggling-in-their-marriage couple. No passion for what Jesus is doing with the young people of their church.
Tripp then offers a caution by the late theologian B.B. Warfield, addressing his students in theology –
She smiles. But always with a look of “Be careful!” in her eyes.
On Tuesday for breakfast, I indulged my morning with a ride via C115 to Florence. Someone urged me to find “the best” coffee shop there, which I took to be the Aspen Leaf Bakery and Café. The recommendation was on target. Try the Burrito with a steaming cup of ‘Joe.
It was also a time for me to hear from the Lord. A few minutes reflecting on Colossians 4, listening to the Apostle Paul commend his colleagues in ministry – Tychicus, newly converted Onesimus, Aristarchus who was sharing Paul’s chains, Mark, Justus, the prayer warrior Epaphras, beloved Dr. Luke, and Demas. Faithful-to-one-another Christians make a great Kingdom team.
THE DANGER OF FAMILIARITY
Moments later, what arrested my attention were words found in Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling, Chapter 8, entitled “Familiarity.” Tripp recalls a conversation with the head of a national Christian ministry, who candidly confessed “I don’t think anything excites me any more.” A bit stunned, Tripp thought, “You’d better be excited. You are leading a ministry, and if you can’t get your excitement back, maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing.”
Then Paul Tripp adds, “What a sad and dangerous place to be.”
I resonate with this warning. Too often, I talk with Christians who are excited about everything else except their walk with God. Idol-like substitutes include their recent cruise, their new lake home, their favorite sports team, or (dare I say it) one’s new motorcycle.
But try to shift the conversation to what God is doing in one’s life, and the excitement evaporates. No new discovery in the Word from the voice of the Spirit. No new opportunity to love someone outside of Christ and share the good news with him or her. No importunate prayer for a nearby struggling-in-their-marriage couple. No passion for what Jesus is doing with the young people of their church.
Tripp then offers a caution by the late theologian B.B. Warfield, addressing his students in theology –
We are frequently told, indeed, that the great danger of the theological student lies precisely in his constant contact with divine things. They may come to seem common to him because they are customary. An average man breathes the air and basks in the sunshine without ever a thought that it is God in his goodness who makes his sun to rise on him, though he is evil, and sends rain to him, though he is unjust. So you may come to handle even the furniture of the sacred sanctuary with never a thought above the gross earthly materials of which it is made.
The words which tell you of God’s terrible majesty or of his glorious goodness may come to be mere words to you—Hebrew and Greek words, with etymologies, inflections and connections in sentences. God’s stately steppings in His redemptive processes may become to you a mere series of facts of history, curiously interplaying to the production of social and religious conditions…much like other facts occurring in time and space which may come to your notice.
It is your great danger. But it is your great danger only because it is your great privilege. Think of what your privilege is when your greatest danger is that the great things of religion may become common to you!
Other men, oppressed by hard conditions of life, sunk in the daily struggle for bread perhaps, distracted at any rate by the dreadful drag of the world upon them and the awful rush of the world’s work, find it hard to get time and opportunity so much as to pause and consider whether be such things as God, and religion, and salvation from the sin that compasses them about and holds them captive.
The very atmosphere of your life is these things; you breathe them in at every pore. They surround you, encompass you, press in upon you from every side. It is all in danger of becoming common to you! God forgive you. You are in danger of becoming weary of God!
(Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Religious Life of Theological Students,” an address given October 4, 1911.)
The words which tell you of God’s terrible majesty or of his glorious goodness may come to be mere words to you—Hebrew and Greek words, with etymologies, inflections and connections in sentences. God’s stately steppings in His redemptive processes may become to you a mere series of facts of history, curiously interplaying to the production of social and religious conditions…much like other facts occurring in time and space which may come to your notice.
It is your great danger. But it is your great danger only because it is your great privilege. Think of what your privilege is when your greatest danger is that the great things of religion may become common to you!
Other men, oppressed by hard conditions of life, sunk in the daily struggle for bread perhaps, distracted at any rate by the dreadful drag of the world upon them and the awful rush of the world’s work, find it hard to get time and opportunity so much as to pause and consider whether be such things as God, and religion, and salvation from the sin that compasses them about and holds them captive.
The very atmosphere of your life is these things; you breathe them in at every pore. They surround you, encompass you, press in upon you from every side. It is all in danger of becoming common to you! God forgive you. You are in danger of becoming weary of God!
(Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Religious Life of Theological Students,” an address given October 4, 1911.)
REKINDLING THE EXCITEMENT
There is no better place to have your passion for your Lord re-ignited and refreshed than joining on Sunday with God’s excited people in gathered worship. We are experiencing that here at the Free Church of Cañon City. Jesus is manifesting His presence in our midst. The Spirit of God is moving in people’s hearts. We are hearing from the voice of God, urging us into the supernaturally powered life…of servants!
Set aside your boredom…join in the tidal wave of joy, found in Christ and with his disciples, we are experiencing here each Sunday.
There is no better place to have your passion for your Lord re-ignited and refreshed than joining on Sunday with God’s excited people in gathered worship. We are experiencing that here at the Free Church of Cañon City. Jesus is manifesting His presence in our midst. The Spirit of God is moving in people’s hearts. We are hearing from the voice of God, urging us into the supernaturally powered life…of servants!
Set aside your boredom…join in the tidal wave of joy, found in Christ and with his disciples, we are experiencing here each Sunday.
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