Daily Post: Casual
And within the context of human history, it’s been a pretty short ride to get here. One good analogy would be: travel. In just over 250 years we’ve gone from horses as the primary means of travel over land, to cars and trucks covering acres and acres of parking tarmac all over the world. Whether you’re a creationist, believing the world is just over 6,000 years old, or an evolutionist, who believes the world is billions of years old, this leap in primary mode of travel is a minuscule amount of time in either context.
There are other good examples of how change has come into our world, both good and bad. Each and every new invention, discovery, design, or development has the potential to render its replacement obsolete. Perhaps the subtlety of some changes have lulled us into a casual acceptance of all change in general. In many ways time gets away from us, and we tend to forget what we never learned from our predecessors who resisted change.
As a young adult (translate teenager) in those rebellious days of the late 60’s and 70’s, my mother and I went round and round about my hair, my clothes, and my casual (her word) approach to my life. I just wanted to “let it be” (Beatles) and “get a little help from my friends.” I found a church that would let me just be me, and accept that I preferred cowboy boots, white shirts and jeans, instead of suits and ties as appropriate worship attire. I didn’t go down the hippie road, I was just being my own casual self.
During those early days of feeling as though God was calling me to ministry, I was on the edge of discovering just what that would mean long term. The “call” of God on a person’s life can’t be explained adequately to anyone since it can only truly be perceived or understood by the inner-nature of an individual changed by God’s grace. It is highly personal, and the specifics cannot be known all up front, but only revealed over time through people, places, events, and God’s Holy Spirit orchestrating it all. The simple version is found in the word “Lordship.” Unfortunately, this one word has almost completely lost its meaning to the world at large. More specifically it often has negative connotations in the Western world, due to our casual approach to salvation.
The true meaning of Lordship isn’t about external expressions of religion or spirituality. Lordship is more basic than that. If I yield my entire life (thoughts, attitudes, purposes, goals, and daily walk) understanding it should be lived for my LORD (Jesus), then I understand the call of Jesus on the life of every person of faith… not just ministers. Therein lies the issue.
Our spiritual paradigm today is a much more casual approach to worship, the Bible, and the call of Jesus to live a God-honoring life. Like the mighty and powerful horse in the image above, we have bowed instead to the pursuit of things like money, power, influence, and faster, more expensive cars. We allow the God of Creation a couple of hours every week, as we casually make our way to the church of our choice, listening to homilies and sermons which effect our lives in innocuous ways, and call this Christianity. Today the word “Lordship” is not even in our vocabulary, and certainly not evident in many lives.
I believe to make a real difference in our world today, we must take literally – not casually – the message of Paul to the young church in Philippi.
Philippians 2:9-11
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus is Lord and there is no such thing as a “casual” expression of His Lordship. It requires bowing, yielding, submitting, confessing, and fealty to Him as King of life itself.
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As I was saying... 