You are truly daft. You see evil everywhere. I confess, you are overly excited and negative. In fact, you are approaching neurotic paranoia.
Maybe, but even in our best moments we find ourselves tasting good and evil. Remember in church yesterday, you said you could have done the sermon much better than the pastor.
Well, admit it, I could have done better. You know me. It was as if the sermon came from Newsweek instead of the Bible. Pithy clichés are no substitute for in depth Bible study.
You could preach, but you aren’t the preacher, or at least you’ve never submitted to the call to preach. Furthermore, don’t you constantly complain about church—the creeds, the responses, the liturgy, hymns, the sermons, and everything else? You don’t even like to recite the Lord’s Prayer and are bothered by how sacraments or ordinances are conducted!
Why repeat something another has said or written? Spirituality—especially prayer—must be personal. Shouldn’t our faith be expressed in our terms, in our voice?
Granted, empty worship is possible and perhaps happens more than we’d wish, but who decides what is empty or full? Who put us in charge of evaluating everything? The Gospel message is repenting—saying we are wrong and submitting to God in a Jesus-like love. We say we submit to Christ, but constantly find fault with his bride.
You are a fool. “You shall know them by their fruits.” Certainly we are wrong sometimes, but most of the time we are right. Why do you think God gave us brains and spirits, if not to weigh and evaluate? I suppose you’d be happy if the Sunday services were read to us?
Perhaps God gave us brains and spirits to find the best in a poor or meager spiritual offering. Maybe we aren’t the judge. Maybe there’s water in the desert. Perhaps there’s grace in suffering through things we don’t prefer. Maybe we are designed for the garden—not exciting, but fruitful when God provides the rain. We seem to be always trying to make it rain.
You’d make a good Catholic. Close the brain and take whatever comes. The problem with Catholics, Anglicans, and others is they never have a personal experience. They just go through the motions. They worship in dead churches with dead liturgy under the leadership of dead priests.
I must confess I had those same thoughts until recently. I noticed we have the tendency to define our own faith using our own terms based upon our interpretation of the Bible and we search out worship and praise experiences that suit our tastes. Don’t you see a pattern, here? People are going through the motions?! Why should we even consider this?
How many dead, dry worship services have we endured? Are you insane?! You were totally on board with the contemporary worship and practical sermons you heard in Atlanta. What? You don’t think those services are of God?
Well, yes, I think they probably are—no, I know they are, but maybe that’s only true when the heart comes in submission rather than in self-fulfillment or self-indulgence. Rather than worship great experiences we need to experience great worship. Really, is worship or church about us or God? Who is the spectator and who acts? It seems you choose worship like you choose restaurants or movies. Is the main spiritual question really what’s in it for me?
Listen to yourself. You wouldn’t be satisfied with sitting on hard pews, listening to old music, repeating worn phrases, and hearing lame sermons. You are no better than I. In fact, you are always the one trying to figure the spiritual angles.
Certainly I’d prefer quality and gifted ministers, but is it about my entertainment or intellectual stimulation? What if worship is us and the Father sharing the same space and thoughts? Whatever is going on onstage may be secondary, or even a distraction. What if church has evolved into some sort of religious circus and we never find the time to say, “God, here I am. Where are you in this?” Perhaps true worship is seeing God even in common things—the way young love is obsessed by its object.
Are you saying the Spirit isn’t leading anyone but you? We are responsible for our own spiritual formation and growth. That’s why I search for engaging speakers, good music, and Biblical preaching for us.
Yes, but you only like what you like. That includes the way you read the Bible. You are all about some verses, but you are quick to discount or ignore others. Rebellion is afoot. I want to submit to God and rebel against the vanity of this world.
You are taking this a bit too far. I’m not comfortable with assuming the worst in what I think is the best. Have you no hope or grace?
The rebellion is now plain to me. We are in the same situation as Lucifer and Adam and Eve. The rebellion is in thinking we know best—insisting our own will be done. Even when we are good we taint it with pride and self-gratification. This is rebellion. We do not submit. We do not rest. We depend upon God when it suits us and ourselves when it doesn’t.
You’ve moved to a higher plain of paranoia. According to you, we can do no good. We can summon nothing. You describe boredom or death, to me.
Yes, perhaps death is an apt description. If we are dead in Christ, what are we doing living according to our own desires? Death submits to everything—no complaints, no evasions, no selfish choices—just submitting to what is given.
I think you are wrong.
I know you do. That’s your problem—you think way too much for your own good. You mimic the voices of this world—you sweeten them with Christian jargon and your own version of everything. You go to churches that make you feel good and right. Confession, repentance, and humility are a rarity. You don’t submit to God, you try to force Him to submit to your selfish faith. We live on a rebellious planet and the prevailing spirits spin our selfish desires into webs of deceit and false spirituality.
You are sounding like a lunatic. We have choices to make and we have to “work out our salvation” as the Bible says. Failure to strive in the faith is failure to believe.
I’d just have you consider how much of your faith is actually faith and how much is your own design. What in your faith is greater than you? In the end, life is living in loving submission and this defines our relationship with God—just like Jesus taught and lived. Furthermore, worship is submitting each moment to whatever God sends. We come to God empty and broken, like the thief on the cross—like a child.
I won’t listen to anymore of this nonsense. I won’t give up my right to make decisions I know to be permissible.
There! You hit the nail on the head—your rights—that’s the rebellion speaking. I overrule you in this matter. You may speak for the flesh, but speaking for the spirit, we’re going to see what submission has to offer. I think I’ll reconsider all our wanting. The Father’s will is to conform to Him. The question for now is, “In this, whatever it is, are we submitting to God?” I assume you’ll fight me on this.
Yes, because I know you always give in.
No comments:
Post a Comment