This Is Your Wake-up Call…

This is my wake-up call. It might well be yours, too.

I have realized that I am far too easily pleased. Show me a picture of a cute dog, and my day is made. Tell me an inspiring story, and my heart is filled. Give me a salary, and I am convinced that I have everything that I need.

There is an ocean of difference between comfort and contentment. We often settle for comfort. You can compare comfort with fast food; you get what you want in no time, it tastes good, it even makes you feel good. But there isn’t much nourishment in a quarter-pounder with cheese. Settling for comfort, will never really fill us. Where comfort has the knack of disabling us spiritually, contentment does the opposite. Content followers of Christ are spiritually awake.

I recently wanted to know what people believed the primary role of the church was. I got some pretty good responses. The one response wasn’t what I would call a textbook answer, but it was the one that got me thinking the most. The one person said that the church should wake up.

I can’t speak for the universal church, but I can speak for myself. Yes; in many respects, I need to wake up.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3 was my reminder that I seriously need a wake-up call:

“…I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Paul’s wish for the Ephesians, and my wish for all followers of Christ, is that we will know Christ’s love, and know that we will never be able to fathom the magnitude of His love for us. Paul also alludes to the fact that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.

What the world needs is a church that truly believes in the unfathomable magnitude of Christ’s love for us, and a church that moves in sync with the truth that God is able to do so much more than our finite minds can fathom.

If, like myself, you have become a comfortable follower of Christ; if the grace of Jesus Christ has made you comfortable with the fact that you are OK, then the Spirit is urging us to wake up.

Don’t settle for comfortable Christianity. Don’t settle for being the good guy or girl. I don’t want to be OK with a domesticated life. My prayer is that Christ will make a total mess of our perfectly laid out lives, that nothing will make sense, but that we will be totally overwhelmed by His love and the things that He wants to do in and through us.

The time has come for the unfathomable to come alive in our lives.