Excuse me? Surely my ears must be failing me. She did NOT just use the words God and whore in the same sentence…much less while praying?!?! For a brief moment, I felt exactly what you were feeling after reading the title of this blog, and then those feelings turned to a sinking fear that was accompanied by the voice of the Holy Spirit telling me that this was my message.
As a whole, Christians in America have grown shockingly comfortable with treating God as their whore. There is no relationship, no love, and attention is only sought out when there is a need. We see it over and over again in the lives of others, but I suspect that we would find ourselves guilty as well if we spent time in true self-examination. As I see it, there are two main points in time where we worship God, and we all fall into one of the two categories. We worship and praise God when everything is good. We “ride the wave” of blessings, and then walk away from God when things get hard, only to return when life starts looking up again. OR, we only run to God when we hit rock bottom. We live a life filled to the brim with sin and worldiness. When our fragile lives shatter, we turn back to God with feeble apologies until we come back to a place of ease and find the opportune time to resume our former activities. We seek God when we need something. We use and abuse Him.
God is not your crutch.
God is not your wallet.
God is not your shrink.
God is not your (fill in the blank).
There are too many people who have been turned off to Christianity with the excuse that anyone who follows Jesus is just a hypocrite. Unfortunately, that accusation is widely accepted…and for the most part true. The problem with hypocricy is that every single Christian will fail in their walk with God. Stumbling blocks are good at their job…causing us to stumble. The difference maker isn’t whether or not you will come up against temptation and make the wrong choice. The difference maker is how you respond in the aftermath. A hypocrite will act like they are better than the next guy just because they failed yesterday, and, after all, the past is behind them. Hypocricy as it stands isn’t really about walking the walk, but more about maintaining an attitude that is “holier than thou” when dealing with non-believers. A better, Christ-like approach after stumbling is to admit that you screwed up and repent.
Repentance is something that isn’t really practiced in churches from what I’ve observed. I’ve sat through too many sermons on salvation that focus 99% of the message on believing in God, believing that you’re a sinner, believing you need grace, believing, believing, believing. I grew up thinking that repenting from something was to apologize for doing it. I’ve talked to many of my peers who have similar definition of repentance. Apology is not repentance. To repent from something is to tear yourself away from it and remove it completely. It is not only feeling sorry about something, but realizing the depth of hurt, pain, etc. that accompanies it, and then turning away forever. If you’ve ever gone swimming you can understand repentance. Apology isn’t enough. Its like standing in a pool with an umbrella while its raining. Is the umbrella keeping your head dry? Sure, but the rest of your body is soaked. Apologies might keep your head above water, but they won’t do the whole job. Repenting is getting out of the pool, draining it, filling it with concrete, and then going inside. Verbs are about action. Repent is a verb, not a feeling. It is turning away from sin and not looking back. When a snake sheds a skin, it doesn’t keep the old one in its closet to put back on later. Similarly, when we repent from something, we don’t hold onto it to resume later.
Repenting isn’t a one time act. Its an on-going process that fosters spiritual growth and maturity. It is a living amends for the actions of our past. The heart of the salvation message is to repent. Believing is important, but you can believe in God without having salvation. Without also having a change of heart and committing your life to Christ, belief as it stands alone is void. The New Testament is filled with apostles and Jesus telling people to repent. The heart of their message is changing your life by turning your back to the world in pursuit of Jesus. The accountability God holds you to is in direct correlation to your knowledge of the truth. Conviction works when we know that something is wrong. Its our conscience telling us we shouldn’t be doing that. We live in a country that has free access to the truth. If you’re from the bible belt like I am, you grew up in a town with a church on every city block. There isn’t much ignorance left when it comes to what is and isn’t sin.
