Today’s Reading: John 7; John 8
Scripture: John 7:14-15
14 Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man get such learning without having studied?"
Observation: The people's response to hearing Jesus teach is telling. "How did this man get such learning without having studied?" In other words, they believed that the only source of learning was their teaching. And because Jesus had not gone through their course of study, they couldn't figure out how He could have the knowledge base or wisdom to teach as He did. Even though they were religious, they were humanistic. They thought that apart from their own system, there was nothing. They, in their study of God, forgot about God.
Application: It is possible to be very committed to God and to the things of God and to miss God. It is possible to be very involved in the pursuit of God and to miss God. How is this possible? I think it is because the authentic pursuit of God is hard work. It is not at all easy. So, we create shortcuts and substitutes for connecting with God. We make rules and lists and such.
For example, daily communing with God is the desired goal, but it is hard to measure and even harder to do, so we substitute reading the Bible and a designated number of minutes for praying. Then, if we read the required Bible passages, and give the necessary minutes on our knees, we check it off our list and our "time with God" is done. Never mind if we might have been distracted by stray thoughts or too sleepy to really connect with God -- we did the time! So we are OK. Meanwhile, God wanted to just have us quiet our hearts before Him and listen to His still small voice. We have totally missed God but we are OK with it because we fulfilled the substitute ritual that we created.
Bottom line: For me it's this: I must strive to stay fresh and honest with God. I must vary my spiritual practice. I must worship. I must be silent. I must kneel. I must lay prostrate. I must stand and lift my hands. I must work to bread any routine and habit that would substitute itself in my life for real living relationship with God. And I must be honest with my heart and ask if indeed, I connected with God. And I must clear more time to wait until the connection is real and clear.
Prayer: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. I fall so short of this that I am journaling about today. I do desire, in my heart of hearts, to know you intimately and passionately. But I struggle with busy-ness and distractions that I inflict upon myself. Help me to follow the path of simplifying my life and clearing time and space for You. I say that You are the most important Person in my life. Help me to live that out every day.
This I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
1 comment:
Truly, this is the struggle of the Christian life; to authentically connect with God and have him change us. It is so important that we stop and question and assess whether this is happening in our lives or not.
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