Amusement Park Faith

It amazes me how much the culture of amusement effects our faith. All too often we, like Peter, want to stay on the mountain top, flitting from one spiritual high to the next.  I think it's this spiritual "disease" that motivates church hopping; that enables us to troll the ever growing "self help" section of the Christian bookstore looking for just the right book that will allow us to divert responsibility for our spiritual malaise onto someone else; and that accounts for the popularity of Joel Osteen and those like him preaching a prosperity doctrine.   The whole notion of entitlement, a religious entitlement so to speak,  has crept into our faith demanding the right to be spiritually fat, dumb and happy.

We don't function very well when there is a lull in our spiritual fervor, when we sense a growing boredom in our relationship with Christ, when we no longer get goosebumbs, the certain sign of the Holy Spirit moving in a situation, circumstance, song or sermon.  We don't know how to live with boredom and we certainly don't know how to live in the valley.

Jesus took Peter, James and John up on that mountain - Mt. 17:1-9 - not to get a religious fix.  Jesus took them up on that mountain so they could experience a genuine understanding of who Jesus was.  Knowing God, the Creator of the Universe, the One who desires an intimate relationship with His creatures that bear His image, rather than knowing about God, ignites a true pursuit of God.  

I find it somewhat ironic - the more God reveals Himself to me, the less it seems I really know about Him.  I'm OK with that.  I'm getting more comfortable with those dry times, those down times when the needle on the spiritual compass is spinning in cirlces, in my journey. I don't ever want to get to a place where I think I've got God figured out.  I think that's where boredom begins.  

So what do you do when you find yourself dealing with a little spiritual boredom.  Hold on!  Hold on to an intimate pursuit of God.  He rewards those who earnestly seek Him...with more of Himself.