Chasing Ease or Chasing God?
Do you feel God’s nearness? Is your faith flowing? Or are you wondering how on earth did you end up with this penalty loop once more?
Faith journey does not have to resemble the Israelites’ journey through the desert. That’s not Biblical living. The journey to the Promised Land could have lasted just a few weeks but it lasted 40 years because all the penalty loops they took. Because they did not obey God. They grumbled instead. They took idols of all sorts. They tried to manage on their own. But that’s not Biblical living. That’s ungodly living.
God is calling us – like the Israelites – to live close to him, to obey him, to grow and mature in his love. Just like Mary DeMuth writes in her book Everything: “I fear we are like those pesky Israelites. God wants to grow us up, to bring us to new vistas and promised lands aplenty. He created us for adventure, not ease. Instead of obeying in the moment and experiencing powerful spiritual growth, we wander around in circles chasing ease, trusting in ourselves to solve our problems, living a Godless life. We arrive forty years later, looking back, and wonder why in the world we didn’t grow and why God seems terribly distant.”
Are you chasing ease or chasing God?
Are you taking unnecessary penalty loops in the race? Do you wander around in circles chasing ease? Maybe that’s the key here. We are looking for ease, not for adventure. We are looking for entertainment, not for growth. We are looking for superficial quick-fix spirituality, not true worship. We are indeed chasing ease, not God. Lord, have mercy!
When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realise that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence. (James 1:2–4 Phillips)
Mary DeMuth asks in the preface of Everything “Why is it that some people can know Jesus for forty years and be stingy and untransformed? Why is it that others can exude Jesus four months after shaking hands with Him? The answer? It has to do with what those people do with everything. They either hoard their “everything” as a means to coddle and control their lives, or they joyfully relinquish everything to Jesus.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I want Jesus to be my everything.
Every day.
Every way.
Gracious God,
Forgive us for looking for ease, not you.
Forgive us for not giving you our everything.
Enable us to see what parts of our lives we are not surrendering
and then give you our everything
every day of our lives.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Q4U: When did Jesus become your everything?
Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you embrace Jesus as your everything!
Image courtesy of Mary DeMuth. Linking up today with Thought-Provoking Thursdays and Faith Filled Friday.