Going Through The Motions

Was yesterday summer, or was it autumn? Seemed rather warm for the middle of October, I wonder if the weather is just kind of going through the motions. Our faith in Christ is known to the world by our good works. However, we may know of someone who is very religious. He goes through the motions of piety and prayer, but there does not seem to be a spark of life behind his efforts. We can know these persons because we have done the same things in our past. We comforted our guilt with an attendance record at church services. We shored up our resume of false piety by kneeling at every prayer, praying at every meal, and running quickly through rehearsed and memorized prayers for show. One day, someone or some thing reminded us that nothing else matters if we do not believe in Christ Jesus.

A personal tragedy may have shattered the foundation of our false faith. We got angry with God. How could He let this thing happen? Someone got sick and died, perhaps a close friend or family member. How come God didn't answer that prayer or respect that period of fasting? After all, we told the church body time and again how we fasted, making sure that all saw how faithful our motions were before God. For that brief moment of anger, God may indeed have been happy with us, because, for once in a miserable motion-filled life we had something genuine to share with our Lord. Many of us have been angry with God, and often it has come from a tragedy. For a time the motions of faith stumbled in the test and we actually came to God and spoke to Him.

As the anger cooled, an awareness of how close we came to sin in our anger may have prompted a prayer of repentance. We apologized to the Lord for our hasty, angry words. More real communication followed. We may never understand God's timing in taking loved ones away from us, but gradually we learn to ask God and not accuse Him. We ask forgiveness not with just words, but with a heart ready to hear God's word. We stop worrying over what position is best for prayer and just talk to God, pouring out a heart of pain, fear, anxiety, worry, stress, and in time, thanksgiving, joy, peace, and love. The motions of faith may get us started, sort of like turning the props on those little airplanes. Turning the prop is but a motion, what we want is the engine running so we can play. By all means, start up your prayer with a motion, but then run the engine and talk to God from the heart.

Bucky