In recent conversation I
found myself saying how I would love to visit New York but never live
there. As soon as the words had escaped
my mouth I thought, wait… really? Did I
mean that? Why would I say that? New York sounds amazing! But the more I have thought about it the more
I agree with what seems to be a somewhat wise girl trapped inside this crazy
body of mine.
Imagine, if you will,
having a momentary lapse in commitment to your newest “diet”. We all have them. Our “fat” days that cause us to rethink all
of our food choices until that giant piece of chocolate cake is offered to us
and we decide that it would be just rude to deny taking it. Or a friend calls and has had the worst night
of her life so you tell her to come over so you can both eat your feelings in a
giant bowl (or carton) of ice cream.
Guilty!
That dessert is worth it,
and delicious… but can you imagine having that dessert every day for a year? Not just for one meal but for all meals? I can tell you that by the end of the first
day you will not want to look at another piece of cake again for the rest of
your life. Not because it isn’t good- it
is- but it isn’t special anymore, it’s expected… familiar… boring.
Imagine if we were to
assume the same thing of our friendships, churches or even our relationships
with God? Imagine taking for granted
that your friends have always been there for you and allowing something small
to get in between you? Or what if the
church that you used to be so excited to bring your friends to became ordinary
and even you had to fight to get yourself up out of bed on a Sunday morning to
go? Or worst of all, what if God has
proven Himself over and over to be faithful in your life and slowly you stop
spending time with Him until one day you question if He is even there?
It reminds me of Samson; an
imperfect man with an incredible gift from God, his strength. Beyond that
Samson had something else of the greatest importance- a relationship with
God. In reading the story recorded of
Samson in Judges 16 you come across one
of the most horrific statements every recorded… (vs. 20) “when he woke up, he thought, ‘I will do as before’… but he didn’t
realize the Lord had left him.”
When
something becomes routine, even the most extraordinary of things can become
ordinary. There is no other option, if
we do not realize it, other than to take it for granted.
Another
baptism night… another testimony… another story of deliverance…
“But he
didn’t realize the Lord had left him.”
Why
wouldn’t he realize? How could he not even
notice that the Lord was not with him? More
than we’d probably like to admit, we find ourselves doing the very same thing
that caused Samson to wake up alone on that dreadful day… “when he woke up he
thought, ‘I will do as before’…” I will
do as before. I will do as… BEFORE.
I’ll
just go to that one person who prayed for me.
I’ll just recite those two scriptures.
I’ll just find that one place at the altar that I felt God last. I’ll just pat my head and rub my stomach
because it worked LAST TIME. I’ll just
do as I did BEFORE.
God is
not living in the past, and neither should our relationships with Him be.
My
challenge today is for myself. To look
around at the relationships in my life as if it is for the first time. To look beyond current or past (temporary) circumstances that have
been preventing me from seeing the bigger picture. To remind myself, because we are human and we
forget, how truly good God is and how blessed we really are. To be intentional with our words and our
actions. And to not go through life flippantly
expecting that things will stay the same and require no further action on our
part. I will not do as I did before, but I will do something new. Because God is chocolate cake… and chocolate cake is
GOOD!
Psalm 34:8
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!
Isaiah 43:18-19
Do not [earnestly] remember the former things;
neither consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing!
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