Just a Baby

Today dad preached on baby Christians. I felt such conviction. Paul yelled at the church for not maturing and getting off their milk and when my dad talked about the symptoms of a baby Christian I found myself in each section. My Christianity has stopped developing because I have stopped persuing God. Not reading my Bible, and not living the way that I should on a daily basis has shown me that I am still not mature. Then something happened. We were in the car and Chris asked me why my dad doesn't ever preach on anything exciting. A. I am a big daddy's girl so don't ever rip on my dad, but there was something more to what he said. Our society wants fed excitement. We want to leave Sunday mornings and feel good about ourselves and "feel" like we are doing the "right" thing by going to church and by being a Christian. The truth is that we shouldn't need that confirmation. I get irritated because everyone looks for the BIG miracle or the goosebumps or whatever to show them their "sign" that everything is all real and the truth is that sometimes you don't get that so it is better not to rely on it in the first place. Luke 11:29 talks about people needing a miracle and our society is no different today than the people that Jesus dealt with. We want our proof for our peace of mind. Even if we got our proof the reality of that moment would fade away until eventually it would feel like it was a dream anway. Soon we would need constant confirmations to remind us that God and everything in the Bible was all true. We would end up like the children of Israel needing our pillar of fire and yet turning back to the golden calf regardless. I can honestly say that I have highs and lows like every other Christian out there that I need encouragement from my brothers and sisters to keep me going sometimes, but no matter how far I have ever gotten Christ has always persued me and pulled me back. I know that when I go to my dad's church that we don't have all of the lighting and sound and that my dad doesn't stand up there and give us a pat on the back and that sometimes as he gets into stuff in the Bible that I don't even understand that it can get hard to sit there for an hour and 45 minutes with my butt and my back aching. The truth is however that reading, studying, learning, and growing are not always fun, and takes a lot of time and work. Our religion is a faith based religion that is based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ which are presented and told in his word the Bible. Our salvation is based on our faith and our faith is based on things that are not seen and our faith comes by hearing the word of God and it grows by living it. So, even though Chris keeps trying to explain to me that he wasn't ripping on my dad, but he just wants to learn about something exciting I keep getting reminded of when it was either Peter or Paul was preaching and the guy fell asleep in the window and fell out and died. I can't find it in my Bible so someone will have to remind me (I think that it is somewhere in Acts, but I am not sure) I guess that hearing someone preach for long periods of time has never been exciting. Sorry this blog is so long again :)