Taking the easy way out. It’s something we’ve all thought about from time to time, wondering if sticking it out and going through the hardships would be worth it.
Sometimes, we decide to stick it out. We decide that what we’ve been standing on and standing for is worth the fight. It’s valuable to us, so we refuse to have a second rate answer.
Other times, we find the easiest thing to do is to just give up. We quit, and we walk away, and try to forget we ever wanted what we were hoping for in the first place.
If you’re being totally honest with yourself, you may even find that you look back on that day and wonder, “What if I hadn’t walked away? What if I stuck it out?”
I am a firm believer that this decision point is a place all believers must come to when dealing with the miraculous. Do we want to stick with believing for the miracle working, life changing, power of God, or are we content with a Readers’ Digest Bible, a book that has nice stories but no power in it to change the lives of the people who read it?
Sadly, most of the church has chosen the watered down, powerless substitute we have been calling The Gospel because they haven’t seen a manifestation of the Power of God.
The early church was not content with living a powerless life. In fact, living in the miraculous was the norm for Jesus and He desired it to be that way for His disciples as well.
Do you remember the story of the demon possessed boy that was brought to Jesus and His disciples? We see it in Matthew 17, and when the disciples attempted to cast out the demon, they failed. Most Christians focus on Jesus telling us that this type of demon didn’t go out except by prayer and fasting, which is true, and in fact we should live a lifestyle filled with prayer and fasting. Let’s look at it in The Message Bible though.
14-16 At the bottom of the mountain, they were met by a crowd of waiting people. As they approached, a man came out of the crowd and fell to his knees begging, “Master, have mercy on my son. He goes out of his mind and suffers terribly, falling into seizures. Frequently he is pitched into the fire, other times into the river. I brought him to your disciples, but they could do nothing for him.”
17-18 Jesus said, “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring the boy here.” He ordered the afflicting demon out—and it was out, gone. From that moment on the boy was well.
19When the disciples had Jesus off to themselves, they asked, “Why couldn’t we throw it out?”
20 “Because you’re not yet taking God seriously,” said Jesus. “The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say, you would tell this mountain, ‘Move!’ and it would move. There is nothing you wouldn’t be able to tackle.” (Matthew 17:14-20 MSG)
How much does Jesus describe the culture we live in? “What a generation? No sense of God! No focus to your lives!” How true is that of us? How aware are you of God in your daily life? You see, prayer and fasting aren’t the focus here. All prayer and fasting are designed to do is bring you closer to an awareness of the reality of God.
I’ve really been learning a lot lately about the reality of God. The simple fact of the matter is, most Christians go through their day to day lives completely unaware that there is another world out there.
You see, for years we’ve been taught by The Church all the principles we need to be successful in the world. The end result is a church that is better at living in the world than changing it. We’ve got “7 Steps to Receive Your Healing” and “15 Keys to Deliverance” and “4 Keys to Divine Prosperity”, and all of these are good teachings, don’t get me wrong, but we’re missing the forest for the trees.
The focus shouldn’t be on the results, the focus should be on Jesus, and that encounter with Jesus gets us the results. But we’ve focused on results and results alone. And, since we’ve focused on the results and removed the church from having an experience with God, what do we cling to? The Bible.
Now, don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way: We were never meant to worship the Bible. We were meant to read the Bible, and it would lead us to Jesus, and we worship Him.
Now, worship is one of those words that has good and bad ideas attached to it at the same time. Worship is our giving praise and honor to God, but too often, the only time we think of worship is at church, when in reality, it should be a part of our daily lives.
That’s what the writers in the Old Testament talked about, it’s how they lived their lives. What did David mean in the Psalms when said, “I meditate on Your Word day and night?” Was he talking about the Bible? No! He was referring to their conversation they had, and saying, “You know, I just can’t stop thinking about what we were talking about last night, and all the amazing things you showed me!” That was his worship.
And remember, this is coming from a man who didn’t even have the Spirit of God living on the inside of Him! If a man who wasn’t born again could have an experience with God that was so real and so tangible that He kept thinking about it and couldn’t get it out of his head, how much more should we as believers be having real experiences and encounters with God?
So then the question is, “Why don’t we?” Go back to Matthew where we were reading earlier. No sense of God. No focus to our lives. We aren’t yet taking God seriously.
I know this isn’t the type of post that makes you feel good, but it’s the type of post that we need to read. It’s the type of thing we need to preach.
It is the reason we are not seeing more miracles in our lives. It’s the reason we’ve prayed for healing or finances, or whatever else you may need, and not seen results.
It is something that the church needs to get back to. In part two of this post, coming next week, we will discuss just that: How to get back to having experiences and encounters with God and a relationship with Jesus.