If You’re Bored with Your Faith, This is Why

In life, there are puzzling mysteries begging to be solved and compelling mysteries calling to be explored.

Too many of us lead anemic spiritual lives that barely nourish our own souls and don’t attract any real interest from spiritual seekers because we treat God like the first kind of mystery – something to be solved.

Patiently, we explain the formula for knowing how one needs God and then steps one, two, and three on how to meet God. From there, we hand out pamphlets, classes, prescribed prayers, and “the right verses” to any concern or question that may arise for our eager converts.

If they have questions, we have answers. If we don’t have an answer, they’re asking the wrong question, so we send them back to the most recent answer we provided and instruct them to start over from there.

When we reduce a relationship with the Living God to a religious paint-by-the-numbers exercise, we aren’t representing Jesus as much as we’re satisfying an unhealthy craving for spiritual fast food. We’ve been waving hungry souls on to the window at McChurch and McChurch-Lite for so long, many of us have forgotten God is not that kind of mystery.

You see, the Living God, the Creator God, the Redeemer of Humankind, the Almighty, the Author of Our Faith, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, isn’t a puzzling mystery to be solved, He’s a compelling mystery to be explored.

Like outer space.

Like the frontier.

Like the deep sea.

Like the height and depth of orchestral symphonies.

Like the spectrum of light as it plays out through the endless palette of colors through countless artistic mediums.

Like the intricacies of biology, chemistry, physics, and meteorology.

Like the limits of the body.

Like the capacity of the mind.

Like the miracle of the heart.

The apostle Paul felt it vital to convey the imperative nature of this mystery to Timothy, in case he was delayed in communicating it to him face-to-face when he wrote: “I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” 1 Timothy 3:14-16 ESV

How much more wondrous to be invited into a mystery by an explorer struggling to discover the optimal words to explain what he or she has witnessed in their expedition into the God-life?

How much more compelling to be told there is more of God to investigate, experience, and understand, and that it is to this life of traveling the endless expanse of the Jesus adventure that you are inviting this hungry soul?

Beyond the galaxy, there lies eternity with the One in whose imagination was born all we see and know and more than we can imagine.

How much more exciting and comprehensive to explain that every pioneering-undertaking requires training, knowledge, character, sacrifice, and no small amount of suffering, but all to serve the purpose of finding what is there and reporting back on what has been learned!

This is the mystery of the God-life that burned like unquenchable flames in the lives of the first disciples so that a small band of ragged men and women were the genesis for the church which is the Body of Christ which is a mystery that testifies to the greatest mystery – that of God’s love for us.

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,  of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.” Colossians 1:24-26 ESV

We enter this mystery through Jesus Christ and we live it by obeying His Word,

saying “yes” to God when He offers us opportunities to serve others, even if (especially if) they take us out of our comfort zone into a place of full dependency on the Holy Spirit,

and following love to its natural end which is its beginning in the heart of God.

If you’re bored with your faith (and boring those around you with it), it’s because you’ve reduced God to a puzzling mystery that can be solved on a lazy Sunday afternoon after a long nap.

God, the Living God, is a compelling mystery calling restless souls, dissatisfied with the easy trinkets this world treasures, to explore what He is about

and to lose their lives only to gain an eternal adventure.

This is not the way of boredom. It’s the mysterious Way we were designed to travel. Few find out. Be one of those few.

If you’re bored with your faith, this is why . . .https://t.co/TFiz6fMc2y #Jesus #mystery #evangelism

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) April 10, 2018