We as Christians need spiritual recalibration from time to time to ensure that our lives and our faith is set against the standard of the word of God.
This devotional and the previous one (part I) are a tool to help us get recalibrated and to realign ourselves with what the Lord desires in our lives. In the last devotional, I began to discuss how our relationship with the Lord can turn into a religious experience! Below is the continuation of that discussion:
d. We are more concerned with what people think of us and our children than if the Lord is pleased with us. When our focus begins to shift from God two things happen, both of which I stated earlier. Our time is spent more in social gatherings in the name of doing ministry and certain people’s voices become the voice of the Lord. The result is to measure our lives based on what others think of us. We are losing our intimacy with the Lord and we don’t have the convictions we used to have. Unless one of our leaders, or people we respect, points something out to us, we don’t see a need for change!!
e. Our church or denomination affiliation becomes more important to us than knowing someone is a believer and loves God. A denomination is man’s method of putting certain guideline and boundaries to the beliefs of certain groups. It defines them but it also allows them to communicate what they don’t do. That is a small subset of what Jesus came to do. Jesus will come back for His bride which is the body of Christ, not for a denomination. If we are too proud of our denomination or organization, it will cause us to miss out on some things that we could be learning from other believers. It can also affect the unity of the body of Christ. This doesn’t negate the fact that we should always be discerning of teachings and beliefs that people share with us and measure it against the Word of God.
f. When a Pastor preaches a sermon, we’re thinking of who could be getting convicted by this message instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to convict us and change us. We must always keep ourselves available for the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus pointed this out to the religious Pharisees; they thought they were better than others because they were comparing their lives to other non-Pharisees.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. Luke 18:11
The comparison of our lives should be to the Word of God. If Christians around us are living a sinful life, it doesn’t mean we are living a holy life just because we look better compared to them.
g. We set our own standards for right conduct and holiness that we want other people to appreciate and follow. If we are not watchful after years of walking with God, we start developing our own doctrine that we impose on others. Our experiences that gave us success in our relationship with the Lord become the standard for others that we expect to follow. This is even more dangerous if you are in any leadership capacity because people will take you very seriously. This could be in the area of marriage, parenting, clothing, home life, relationships, and so on. The Word of God must be our standard. We can encourage people by our experience, but we cannot and should not expect them to do things our way. There is no cookie cutter Christianity!! We need to allow people to hear the Lord. He knows them well; just because their process doesn’t look like ours, it doesn’t mean they are doing it wrong.
h. We become very predictable in what we will say or how we counsel because we are led more by our experience rather than by the Holy Spirit. As Christians we are called to be reliable and consistent people. That’s a part of our character development. However, we always want to give room for the Holy Spirit to override something we are going to do or say. In John 3:8 the scripture says:
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The spirit is like wind; it blows and you don’t know where it came from and where it is going. Our lives should have stability in the Lord but unpredictability because we are led by the Spirit, and we don’t do things by rote.
Our relationship with the Lord is just like all the other relationships we have. It takes work, it takes time, and it takes sacrifice to develop an intimate and growing relationship with the Lord. If we start relying on our past experiences or rely on other people’s information about the Lord, soon we will know the Lord more as an acquaintance, and we will lose our intimacy with Him. Let’s guard this relationship just as we guard our marriage!!!