What happens when we are here and now, for God?
First, your life opens to God.
I love it when people say that they don’t worship anything. Really? The people I know who don’t worship anything always worship something. They just aren’t aware of it and what they usually worship doesn’t merit that kind of devotion. Worship doesn’t consist of just overtly religious activity, it comes from Middle English and it refers to anything you reverence or respect with a life-defining devotion.
Some people are enthralled to something in their past. Their hair, their high school football record, the professional plans they made that did or didn’t materialize, or the relationships that they wanted that did or did not work out. They live in the past, they are trapped by the past, and it often won’t let go of their present. In the recent economic downturn I have found myself counseling an ever larger number of people who are trapped by grief over the worlds they had devoted themselves to that are dead and gone. Companies that they thought would be there forever; work worlds that have shrunk or disappeared. Other people devote their lives to the future that may or may not ever materialize: a 401 K, retirement, a home in Florida, (or if you live in Texas) a home in Montana.
Even the people who aren’t living in the past or the future are usually not really here, even if they are in the now. They are on their phones, instant messaging people who aren’t here but somewhere else in another time zone or following someone else’s life — Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, or someone else who is famous for being well publicized.
What is interesting about people who find something other than God to worship is that they rarely make a difference or if they do, they make a difference because they are obsessed in some way. I was listening to a special the other night about Ted Williams who became a famous baseball player, then became a famous baseball playing wartime pilot, and then became famous for being cryogenically frozen when he died. But it’s difficult to know what a difference that made to the world.
On the other hand, think of Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Thomas More, Martin Luther King, and a long list of other people —- what do they have in common? They know God and God knows them and that knowledge took them into the world in a way that changed their world.
As important as it is to be responsible, do you know anybody who made a difference in the lives of other people because they planned for retirement, carried a burden of guilt through their lives, worried about the future, or fretted over the past? I doubt it. But those are the gods that a lot of us serve by living in the world of woulda-coulda-shoulda.
Ask God to be present with you now and everything changes. If not in a history-making way, it may be in a way that touches those you love: A child that registers your love; someone you care enough to mentor; someone struggling that you encourage.
In a group setting the question was asked who/what is most important to you. Everyone was supposed to come to the front and use five minutes to answer. Bill and I listened to everyone. We were the last to respond. Mainly we waited for someone to come forward and say Jesus. They were all talking about their children, grandchildren, parents, or friends. We were amazed. This was a church setting! Finally we went forward and told them our feelings about Jesus and how He was the very most important to us and testified about some of the changes He made in us. Do people just think Jesus is unreal or an idea or dead and out of sight? To all who really know the Lord He is Reality. Isn’t this basically the first and greatest of all commandments? To love Him with all……How is the Christian missing the essential? When one reads of Bunyan, Wesley, and so many others how difficult is it to understand where their energy came from and why? I recently watched Chariots of Fire. It had been a long while since I saw it. Wasn’t Jesus real to him and was he not raised up with wings of an eagle? How far short are we/me?