Falling Away - 2

Falling Away

April 23, 2023

I really believe God has a sense of humor. I also believe God can be really sarcastic! If you read the Bible you will see some of His questions lead me to that conclusion. But I also believe that because God created me in His image and I’m that way. So, that’s my justification.

Well, last Sunday after I came home from worship, I was getting my comfy clothes on, and I felt God asking me, “so that was encouraging?” Um, well, uh, well, God, I guess not!

If you recall last week I was talking about the fact that it’s easy to fall away from lots of things. We can fall in our relationships, and say, I’m not just feeling it, we fall away from our diets, and healthy eating and lifestyle changes and devotion to God.

It’s easy to do, I mean you don’t need a degree to draw closer to God. It would seem like common sense would do it, but common sense according to the world’s standards isn’t quite getting us there, is it?

If you’re not happy with someone, cause damage to them; if you’re angry at the police department, call in and say there’s a shooter, if you’re angry, take revenge. We say, let your heart lead you, and that can be really, really dangerous, because our hearts often have desires that are not from God. You know what I mean? I don’t think I need to spell that one out.

Jeremiah tells us - - - 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? - Jeremiah 17:9

That’s a pretty intense statement to make about our hearts. But if you really think about it, there’s truth in that statement. That’s not to say all bad things come from your heart, it just means when we allow our heart to be the leader bad things can happen. Our heart and our brain don’t always work in sync. That can happen a lot and we can easily choose poorly.

You’re angry, you want revenge; you’re hurt, so you don’t want to forgive; you don’t want to love, don’t give, don’t serve. Don’t do what you know is right, because you’re heart doesn’t feel it. You need to agree with me, because I have the truth! That’s kind of the way of the world right now. And it’s not getting better!

So, how’s that for my encouraging start? Not! But that’s our starting point. We’re continuing from last week where I spoke about what I believe is our call from God . . . and it’s to seek to be like the early church from Acts 2. And what stuck out to me, was their - - - -

DEVOTION

They were devoted to God and devoted to one another! It all came from the fact that they had a deep love for God and one another. Let’s start with your devotion to God. How are you doing with that? Because I want believe God wants you to be so devoted to Him, that your life will forever be different, because you consistently and persistently follow Him, even through the hardships and difficult times in life. That’s what devotion means in the Greek. It’s a persistent and constant devotion to God.

And that’s where I want to encourage you today. I’ve been reading a really deep book called - - - You are what you love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. It’s by James Smith. As I was reading last week, what he was saying was just so powerful. It hit me that this is about how we grow in Christ and who we are in Christ.

So, let me try to explain to you what Smith is saying. And it really made me stop and think about my past. He tells us this and why often skim over it. The apostle John wrote - - -

19 We love, because He first loved us. - 1 John 4:19

It’s super basic, but when you think about it, my ability to love didn’t just miraculously appear. I didn’t learn how to love just out of nowhere. I had to learn it. It doesn’t always come naturally.

So, how does a baby learn to love? They experience love! They experience it from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and so on. How do they learn to laugh? It doesn’t just naturally happen when they grab their feet and shove them in their mouth. It happens because we lead them to laugh.

A Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar captures this, in an image that is both beautiful and biblical, a metaphor that is natural and supernatural at the same time. Let me explain . . .