Comfortable Christian

For the longest time I would say with a high level of certainty that this is a phrase that I would use to define my relationship with God. Unfortunately, for myself, and many others these two words have become synonymous. While this was never my intention, like many aspects of my own life, I became complacent in my growth.

Making a decision to change an aspect of your life, whether it is your personal faith beliefs, an aspect of your health, your career, or a relationship you have with another is never easy. Unless we continue to reinforce that decision our growth will eventually stop. It comes in the form of only going to church on Sundays, cheating on your diet or skipping a workout, and even giving ourselves permission to enter into a relationship with someone who has many of the characteristics of the person we just cast out of our lives. Whatever it is, our old tendencies come back, and often with a vengeance.

Many people would call this the “enemy” sneaking back into our lives, working his plans, and being patient enough to wait out our own humanity; knowing it’s easier for us to go backwards than it is forwards. I don’t think anyone would argue that routines, especially ones that we find comfortable, are very hard things to break away from. In fact, the more ingrained that pattern is, the more difficult it is for us to make lasting change.

Fortunately for Christians we do not have this option! When we enter into a relationship with God we enter it knowing that there are boundaries and expectations on our relationship. How many of us have heard that being a Christian is the hardest thing? It truly is, because we have a God that cares about us more than anyone in our lives. Not only that, our God desires to have a relationship with us no matter what our faults are and He meets us where we are and expects us to grow.

In my small group on Friday night, we talked about forgiveness; specifically focusing on our forgiveness of God. The conversation soon evolved into the servant nature of our relationship with God. In fact, as it was eloquently argued, we are in fact enslaved to God, as he purchased our lives through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

While that in it self was an amazing teaching, it got me thinking about the general responsibilities we all share as Christians. We are called to grow in our understanding of God, and to really take hold of what His will is for our lives. When we are in congruency with the plans that God has for us, and allow Him to direct our lives, we cannot begin to fathom the amazing things that may happen through us, by Him. While our lives won’t always be filled with “sunshine and rainbows” God’s will, His teachings, and the way our lives play out, always, without fail, are designed to be good for us, and afford us the opportunity to grow deeper in our relationship with Him.

In Luke chapter twelve, we see that our understanding of God’s will for our lives is proportional to His expectations for us. Additionally, when we are incongruent with His will, the “punishment” we receive is proportionate to our understanding of the Word:

"The servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12:47-48)

The good news in all of this is that He entrusts us with many things and we freely choose to take on these responsibilities; however difficult they may be! We all know that God can speak to us in our quiet time, through another individual, or through an event. Sometimes this conversation is designed to remind us that we are straying from His path. When God speaks to us through another person, we can either choose to accept their criticisms as words of encouragement coming from a sincere place, or an attack against us (something the enemy would want us to believe!). It is these individuals in our lives who hold us accountable for our actions that TRULY love us, and aren’t afraid to approach us. It is when we aren’t receiving this feedback from others that we should be truly concerned, because when others stop paying attention to your behavior and the congruency of your actions with your stated ideals, that they have really given up on you.

As one final note, I realize it is hard to have these conversations with others. You don’t want to “come off wrong” or be “misinterpreted.” Even at the age of 30, I am still (in my mind) terrible at starting this type of conversation, but I can tell you that if you truly do it out of love for the other person, they will know it. In fact, it is often in these moments where we are helping to lead our brothers and sisters back to Christ, that God will reveal in our own lives some of the ways we ourselves may have strayed.