Snapshots
Biblical Truth
OF
Sloppy Faith
BIBLE REFERENCES:
Leviticus 20:26 (NIV) “You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.”
Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
2 Corinthians 6:14-18 (NIV) “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and Idols? For, we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people’.”
APPLICATION:
I like to dress down like everyone else. My most comfortable clothes are those that should have been tossed out as rags a long time ago. But there is something about old clothes that make them wear comfortably. You don’t care if they get torn, stained and wrinkled or even have buttons missing. They just feel good.
There is a place in life for being casual, even to the point of being down right sloppy. But, as a Christian, there are areas in life where there is absolutely no room for sloppiness – take for example the way we think, talk and act or our attitudes about life and our relationship with God.
When you read the Old Testament Books of Exodus and Leviticus you will see that God was very strict and formal in his dealings with his people. God’s people could not come to him anyway they felt like. There were precise rules and protocols to follow and there were selected people they had to go through. Aaron’s sons tried to do their own thing by bringing “strange fires” before the Lord (see Leviticus 10:1, 2) with devastating results.
We can, of course, take this casual thing all the way to the other extreme where we become so formal in our relationship with God that our spiritual lives become nothing more than a religious "show-and-tell" filled with prideful rituals and traditions. A prideful attitude is no more acceptable to God than a sloppy one. It is all about the attitude of our heart.
We need to remind ourselves that God is our Abba Father, the Almighty God, the Creator of the universe and He deserves our utmost respect and reverential awe. He is not just my "buddy" or "one of the boys (or girls!)" or someone I hang out with on Sundays; He is my God, the one who I can commune with daily; the one who gives me wisdom and strength to live my life to the fullest; the one who gives me peace of mind and a hope for my future. And, He is the one who will judge whether or not I make it to heaven when my time on earth comes to an end.
I am reminded of a cartoon I saw where a young lad was sitting on the very front row of his church dressed in his swim suit, flippers, goggles and snorkel anxiously waiting for the preacher's final AMEN so he could make a mad dash to his favorite swimming hole.
Certainly, our faith walk needs to be more mature and formal than this!
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A PRAYER:
“Help me God not to get so casual in my relationship with you that I lose my respect for who you really are. Help me not to be so formal that my relationship with you becomes routine, stagnant and filled with religious pride.”
SNAPSHOT:
Since the death and resurrection of our Lord, much of the Old Testament formality has been graciously removed and we can now go directly to God with our prayers and petitions. However, I sometimes wonder if we modern day Christians take this “open door to God” way too casually, with little or no spiritual depth or understanding. We need to be careful that our casual and informal attitudes in life do not spread into our walk of faith and our relationship with God. We dare not become sloppy in these areas.
