Behold for peace I had great bitterness:
but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it
from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast
all my sins behind thy back.
- Isa 38:17
I recently had a discussion with my best friend and fellow church attendee, about how different the church we're at now is than the ones we've been in before. People are more visibly and audibly moved in this church - there are frequent altar calls, and it's just a different atmosphere than anything we've experienced before. We're used to a church where the preacher was loud, but the audience was just that - an audience - and rarely was any emotion shown from the pews.
I struggled with this when I first started attending as well - it is just foreign to us as people today, to let other people see when we're moved in a spiritual way.
I myself had said many times when I was struggling with Church in general - I hadn't gone in a long time, and I said that I was just a private person and that I wanted that private study time - personal time to study the Word of God and to talk with God. I didn't like having to be in a large group of people for that sort of thing.
And so many people hold that idea - even those who go to Church. We feel like we shouldn't smile, or say a word, or get excited about a sermon or the Word of God. Is it fear of what other people think? Is it just that it's so foreign because the world today teaches us to be reserved, to not show positive emotion - is it Satan, or our sinful human nature, making it difficult for us to show the rest of the world that we're excited about the message of Christ, because it might make other people excited too by our example?
When I first moved back home, I looked at my parents and at how vocal and visibly excited they were about the sermons they'd heard. I noticed a change in their everyday life over time - more prayer time, more emotion seen when they walked in the door from Church. And honestly, it sort of scared me - and some days I just thought they were a little extreme. The first time I went to Church with them, for the first time in years - I myself got very emotional. Something just grabbed hold of me and I couldn't stop the tears rolling down my face. And that scared me too - I didn't go back for months. I "wanted to sleep late", I had "other plans" - really, I think I was just scared.
I was afraid of being that emotional all of the time, I was scared of the people in the pews who weren't emotional seeing it and what they would think - I was scared of being that out of control and not really knowing why. It just felt so foreign not being able to hold back those emotions, because I have always been a person who doesn't like to show emotion to other people. I don't like people to know when I'm mad, sad, excited - I've always been so reserved. And my parents had as well, so it was just foreign and strange to me to see both of them so emotional about church.
I've been going to Lakeview for about 5 or 6 months now - regularly. Wednesday, Sunday morning, Sunday evening. I got hooked on pastor Mike's messages. He gives a sermon like a teacher - he really gets his point across well, and he makes sure he stays strictly Biblical - you're not just getting his opinion on a few words during that sermon. At first I was looking at it from too much of an academic perspective. I was still keeping all of the emotion out of it - nodding my head when I agreed sometimes, but still holding a lot back to keep that control in check. Then his sermons seemed to turn to that very thing. How we need to get excited about God, and about the Bible because it is the Word of God. How we should be excited about learning more about God and growing in our own spirituality.
Yesterday he talked about how it is a daily fight to maintain our faith, and a fight to further our faith - we have to fight daily in order to remain where we are spiritually, against the current of the world - but also, the point is not just to keep your head above the water by maintaining, but to make progress against the current by growing further than that maintained state as well. He also talked about the fact that as church members - we have a group of people around us who are fighting - right along side us, and how we should all encourage one another because it is such a difficult fight, and that without a support group (which is what a church should be to itself) it's entirely too easy to just give up the fight, and swim with the current and lose all the spiritual growth God has helped us attain and maintain, making the next fight that much more difficult.
Our position as Christians - or our responsibility as Christians, is to share the message of Jesus Christ. And in today's world, we're so scared to do that. In theology class we've studied about how this is a Postmodern time - postmodern people believe that there is no absolute truth. They've allowed themselves to become so distant from emotion and the truth - that they deny all existence of it. And it's sad to see that even those of us who do believe, those of us who are in Church, are so immersed in that society, and even when we're moved inside - we're still too afraid for whatever reason to let it show, to let it be known - even to ourselves.
How can we influence the world around us if they don't see any signs of happiness for the truth we have? If we can't even show it to the Christians surrounding us on the pews in our own church, how can we ever expect to make a difference in the hateful and unyielding world around us? How do we get past this fear of showing emotion - how do we stop ourselves from being so stubborn to the joy and emotion that the knowledge of Christ can bring?
How do we convince ourselves how insulting it is to Christ not to overcome that restraint the world puts on us, even after His suffering should make us ever grateful in ways that we shouldn't be ABLE to hide - no matter how hard we try?
We all watched and talked about the movie "The Passion of the Christ". Should it really only be Him who was passionate about that sacrifice and love? How can we be so cold and distant to the fact that we've received a most awesome and unexplainable sacrifice from an unfathomable source of LOVE - that was and is absolutely undeserved on our part.
Is that not something to be excited and grateful - and visibly so - about? Why do I - and so many other people have such a hard time letting this show to the world? Are we scared of their opinion - are we scared of our own loss of control if we allow ourselves to truly be happy about something?
I'm praying now for my own ability to let go of that restraint - to be ok with showing the rest of the world that I'm excited about God, and that I'm eternally grateful for the sacrifice and immense love and mercy given to us. I still feel the hardness of the world in my heart way too often. It allows me to become bitter and hard toward other people, that I should love in remembrance of God's love for us.
We should pray and strive to be better examples for the world. To illustrate his forgiveness, to illustrate his unconditional love - despite our undeservedness and sinfulness as humans. We should pray that we will allow ourselves to feel this happiness, because until we learn to depend only on God and the happiness he allows us, we'll never be happy depending on the things and people of the world.
I am challenging myself to do this:
1. To learn more about God
2. To be excited about learning more about God
3. To allow my happiness and sense of peace to come from Him only, and to let it be a visible thing to others
4. To pass that happiness and sense of peace on to others, rather than relying on them to create it for me
5. To use that to encourage those around me to do the same
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