One Life

There is a temptation for any Christian to grow to love the blessings of God more than God Himself, the Blesser. This is especially true I think for the middle-aged Christian. Not middle-aged in physical age, but middle-aged in faith.

There is for the young Christian a sincere adoration of having Christ in your life. It’s a pure child-like faith that is simply astounded that such a God would love such a sinner.

For the veteran Christian there is often movement in one of two ways. For some who never uprooted areas of sin there comes a hardening and a fading away of the latter years of faith. These are often people who have great hurt in their lives though often the hurt comes from a hyper sensitivity of their hearts because of lack of Gospel exposure into painful areas. This prolonged darkness makes for intense sensitivity to any exposure and light – and a sometime surprisingly violent reaction in protecting this territory. You may recognize moments in your own life or someone else’s where they react so strongly from hurt to a seemingly innocuous comment or experience. “Where did that come from?” is often my thought. “Where did that come from?” is a good place to start though – not as a knee-jerk reaction of condemnation of others, but to really look inside your own heart or encourage another to look inside their heart and try to understand what sensitive spots exist in your heart and why. For other veteran Christians (my favorite people to hang out with) there is an incredible peace and contentment in their relationship with the Lord. My mentor Larry Russell told me recently about his mother-in-law who is getting up in years and her incredibly child-like faith. Despite Larry’s skepticism of some of the television preacher’s she sometimes watches, he can see a women who has one focus, one person in view for all of life. “Larry, you would have loved today’s sermon. It was about Jesus.” Though she may not have remembered much about the sermon, she knew one thing – that the preacher talked a lot about the ONE THING that matters – her Lord Jesus. I want a faith like that. Not a sophisticated one like my own but a simple one like those who loved Jesus while He walked on this earth – the prostitute, the tax collector, the disciple who lay his head upon Jesus.

For the middle-aged Christian there is like I have spoken of in my own life a growing sophistication. This is good – a greater understanding of theology, of the nature and dynamics of the church, of the consequences of actions, of past mistakes and future potential. We’ve tasted the fruit of relationship with Christ – and we grow quite fond of that fruit – both the fruit that we see and experience in our own life from the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5) and also the tremendous experiences of seeing God work in your own life, in the lives of others, in the church, and in this world. This is a factor for many people entering the ministry or serving as a lay leader. But the danger is when love for that fruit that begins to overshadow our first love for the Savior. Symptoms of such ailment include devotional times that are seldom, short, detached, obligatory, and always needing practical personal application. Intense struggle and bitterness in the midst of suffering is another clue that we have a greater love for the blessings than the Blesser, for often it is suffering alone that is the path towards a deeper understanding and fellowship with the Lord. Do you love the Lord more than you hate suffering? Are you willing to lay aside even the great god of comfort to have more of Jesus in your life? MANY Christians serve this god of COMFORT as they seek with all their heart and energy to have in their lives physical comfort, emotional comfort, relational comfort, and even spiritual comfort. All great blessings from the Lord – but none worthy of worship. If Jesus sought such comfort in His life, He never would have come to this earth! Don’t turn blessings into idols. COMFORT can be one of the great poisons in the church and Christian life because it can lead to a love of money and material things, a lusting for leisure and pleasure, an abandoning of pursuit of difficult but truly right and worthy endeavors, a refusal to speak truth, confront and forgive, and a debasing of relationship with the living God into a cosmic vending machine.

Christian have you lost your first love? Have you begun to love the blessings of the Lord more than the Blesser? Search my heart o God….