Strivings

I do not know where to begin this conversation. Maybe to tell you that in my Youth Ministry class we've been talking about why high school kids feel the need to go to parties and fool around. In this class my teacher made a statement that got me really thinking about what we strive for. Scott Adair said,

'What if sin is the product of an unhealthy striving for community, belonging, and fulfillment that actually stems from a healthy yearning?'

In Genesis God creates human life and says it is good, and everything that took place in the garden before the fall of man was fulfillment of the striving that God placed in the human heart. Adam and Eve walked and talked with God, they had a personal relationship with Him. They found fulfillment in their relationship with God, but then Satan tried to entice them into a different striving for that fulfillment. This is what Satan does. He takes things that God created as good and uses them against us. 

The things that are the easiest to make our idols are things that God created. In my prophets class we have been talking about the temple in Jeremiah and how the Hebrews created a Zionist religion that assumed God was protecting Jerusalem, that it was indestructible because God had chosen it as a permanent place for His temple. They thought surely God would not allow a foreign nation to come and conquer the land would He? They were completely oblivious to the fact that God had already left the temple and that He was trying to save them from their own destruction. In fact He even states in Jeremiah 7:4,

"Do not trust in these deceptive words:'This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." 

Then in Jeremiah 7:8-11,

"“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD." 

So many times we go into church and have no intention of drawing near, embracing the Holy Spirit that Jesus left for us. We go through the routine claiming, "WE ARE DELIVERED" and when we leave the church we participate in everything that is not of Christ.We think that because we go to church, a place that, "God dwells" that we are saved, when God is not contained by walls.

How does this relate to the quote from my Youth Ministry class? We are all created to have a relationship with God, but we turn what is supposed to be a healthy striving into a to do list. We make going to church 3 times a week, singing in church, taking communion, and hearing a lesson into a list of things we must do to be a Christian, which was not the intention of these rituals by God. All this to say, in our hearts we have a healthy desire for this communication, this relationship with God, but it is when we just go through the motions that we are like the Hebrews in Jeremiah. They were breaking God's heart. Read Jeremiah and learn from them because when you participate in divine communion and worship with the LORD, it impacts all of your actions. Or at least, it should.