What Do You Really Want?

I was driving yesterday, listening to the radio for a little while and the host made a great point.  He said, “We say that we want realness and authenticity, but when we get it, we don’t really like it because it isn’t as refined and dignified as we want it to be.”  The host was talking about football players.  There was an instance this past Sunday in which a member of the Seattle Seahawks football team talked trash about a member of the opposing team.  People were very upset at what Richard Sherman said and they proceeded to call him many things (none of them nice by the way).  However, the truth is Richard Sherman is a very intelligent, articulate young man. He actually stayed in school an extra year so he could finish his Master’s degree from Standford University. At the end of the game he called another player “mediocre and said he wasn’t going to let a mediocre player beat him, because he (Sherman) was the best in the game.”  I’m not even going to deal with what he said in this post.  The point is, people always say they want the real thing, but then they don’t like it when they get it.  Or people many times say, “we need a good leader” yet when a real leader shows up, people generally are not happy they are there.

But let’s take this to another place, your walk with God.  Almost every Christian I know says something along the lines of “I want to grow in my faith or grow closer to God.”  That is a very noble goal and I believe we should all pursue it.  However, are we really willing to pay the price that is going to be necessary to grow in our faith?  On Wednesday nights here at WBC we are studying the book of James.  I love that book for many reasons.  In it James says “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).  What does he mean a “double-minded” man?  He means a person who says one thing, but means or does the opposite.  Many people say “I want to see this church grow.”  Again, a great thing but how many people are you inviting?  I’m not trying to be negative or attack anyone or any church. I simply want us all to see that we are falling in love with an idea or a concept of what church should be, but we aren’t doing anything about it.  I read an article this morning that made an interesting observation.  The author said that we are falling in love with saying the right thing so people will think of us in some way, when in reality we are not that way at all.  The author is basically saying “we are prideful people who want the praise of men rather than the glory of God to be seen.”  That’s a tough pill to swallow isn’t it?  Here is a good verse for us all to memorize, “not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6).  We need to ask God to examine our hearts and show us why we are doing what we are doing.

By His grace and through His strength may we live for Him