Monday, 11 August 2008
-
Are You In a Cocoon of Holiness?
from losers_advocate
In college, it can be very easy to use heavy involvment in campus ministries, conferences, Christian concerts, and sometimes college town churches as a substitute for an actual living, breathing relationship with Christ. We attend social events, all under the guise of Bible study, leadership meetings, and church, and we take in as much "God-stuff" as we can. We read and memorize the required Scripture verses, pray the "thank you" and "please bless" prayers, we sing the tear-triggering songs. Then summer or graduation comes. Things happen and we're unable to attend church. We're no longer in our little cocoon of holiness. We become lax. We fall away from God.
I'm not saying this to criticize the current Christian culture. I just want to remind others that they are not alone. Your relationship with God, as with any relationship, requires work. It is very tempting once school gets out-- either for the summer or for the rest of your life-- to neglect all things tiring. Unfortunately, actively seeking God can fall into this category. I am just as guilty as the next person, thinking "Hey, if I can just make it through the next couple of weeks, I'll be back at school again where I have all those people to help and encourage me and I can get back on track with God."
There's one problem with that theory: I miss Him too much.
In fact, as Christians, we cannot survive without Him in our lives. We cannot truly live without having Christ be a part of our daily lives, without talking to Him about our day, having Him fill up our heart. Think of all of the things that we experience on a continual basis that drain from us all happiness, feeling of joy and zest for life. Count all of the disappointments that overwhelm us every day. How can we survive the daily battles of life without knowing God? And how can we know Him without doing at least a little work?
It's so important for us to realize that anything worth having is worth working for. It's even more important for us to realize that as much as God wants us to work to know Him, our works do not define our relationship with Him! Work that is done to get to know your God are different from the works people do because they think they need to earn His favor. Working on getting to know Him pleases God, but working so that you obtain salvation brings no pleasure to Him at all.
Life is filled with so many ups and downs and trials and tribulations, but as long as we remember to keep our minds stayed on the Lord and to earnestly seek Him, we will never drift away and we will discover that God alone is love and God alone is sufficient.
Do you ever find yourself spending more time on Christian activities than on your personal relationship with God? How do you manage your time?
-
recommend
- recs 2
-
share
-
email
- sent 0
Related Posts
Post a Comment
- Back to revelife's Revelife Site!
- Note: your comment will appear in revelife's local time zone: GMT -05:00 (Eastern Standard - US, Canada)
Comments (22)
for sure! i was so involved in college, i get burned out doin' 'activities' and wonder why my relationship with God wasnt working
Now I'm cognizant of the incidental substitution and try to actively spend personal time with God though it's still not easy. easy say, hard to do
This is actually a real problem for anyone actively involved in ministry. The busier you become, and especially teaching, the less time you "might" spend in personal time with God. If the personal time drops, so does God's annointing in your ministry. You can start relying on yourself and your own knowledge; this is a dangerous place to be.
We must have personal, quiet time with God to ensure His direction in our lives. I've been on my own and made my own decisions with wrong results a few times and I don't like it.
i totally made this mistake in college and god gave me a good butt-kicking to correct me. it's a mistake i do not want to make again.
A mark of a good philosophy (or theology) is that it can exist just as well outside of a bubble.
Only dubious beliefs need to be maintained and reinforced constantly.
no, i am not in the cocoon of holiness.
and no, i did not read the entry.
i've been here too... thanks for writing this article.
You are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.
@jonchin_19@xanga - Yes, it's a serious problem with modern evangelicalism--the ceaseless activity. I think many Christians have a spiritual anxiety that we try to quell with continual religious action. Keeping busy doing 'Christian' things helps us feel 'safe' while we're doing them, but it completely shuts out our ability to actually hear God and think for ourselves.
Mary and Martha come to mind.
I can definitely relate. I was a part of an awesome college fellowship group and every weekend was filled with activities and events.
Then I taught Sunday School for several years after college, and once again my days were filled with activities, meetings, preparation for events, etc.
I started to get burnt out and realized my personal relationship with God was so shallow. It's then I knew things needed to change and I needed to focus on God.
A car accident, in which there was a car and I was the accident, changed all of that for me. There does need to be a healthy balance, but Christians must remember to spend tiem with Christ FIRST and LAST: the first part of the day before doing anythign else, and the last part of the day after everythign else is finished...and, further, talk with Christ throughout the day.
no. i'm the exact opposite. not enough of anything resembling a holy life on my watch. i don't do blatantly bad things, but i do the quiet bad things. the passive-aggressive things. don't go to church. curse quite a bit more than i should as a lady, as a christian, as a human being. selfish. self-indulgent. don't talk about faith when i should. blah blah bloo.
@venusatellite@xanga - me too... -_-
I take the middle way, I attend regular worship sections every Sunday at the church. Yet, I read the Scriptures and pray regularly. I write letters to God lol~
Thanks for posting this. I'm actually returning to Christ after a few years of backsliding, and I guess I'm trying to enter the "cocoon" you're speaking of; I'm seeking out Godly activities to be involved in, in addition to spending alone time with Him. As I do get more involved, though, I'll keep in mind not to get too wrapped up. :)
@agnophilo@xanga - And would you say the same about relationships between friends, or between spouses, or boyfriends/girlfriends? Shouldn't we have to take time to spend with them, talk with them, be with them, to reinforce those relationships? How else would we know each other?
I know a God who's interested in a relationship, not in religion.
@daneeyul@xanga - The difference is, our friends, spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends are there to have relationships with.
I don't believe my friends exist. I don't believe I have a girlfriend.
If I don't pay enough attention to my friends they don't vanish into thin air.
@agnophilo@xanga - I disagree with you--I do believe God exists, but that's not really the point. The point is we believe God looks for a relationship, and that's why we advocate time with him.
I don't think anybody said that if we don't spend time with God then he disappears. He doesn't It just means the relationship is strained. Like it would be if you left a friend or someone you know and like for a long time. That's just the angle we're coming at, not forcing you to agree that God exists.
@daneeyul@xanga - Gods are not phenomenons. They cannot be seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted or observed in any way. You have no reason to suppose your "relationship" is real except your feelings. But beliefs create feelings. If you believe you've won the lottery, you're going to feel a lot of intense feelings about that whether you actually have won the lottery or not. If you believe, for whatever reason, that some of your emotions and intuitions are god reaching down and touching your soul, then you're going to see that as a relationship. But every believer I've met who stopped believing has told me the same thing - they kept feeling those same feelings, they just learned to evoke them in different ways. What christians call "grace" and what buddhists call Nirvana are pretty much the same state of mind.
@agnophilo@xanga - So you believe my belief is a state of mind? That I haven't sat down and logically thought about all of this? That I haven't experienced a range of massive "coincidences" that result from me or those I know praying with this God you claim is unreal? That I haven't seen people healed?
I don't base God on my feelings. If I did, I would only believe in him once every three or four days. My feelings are unreliable. I'm okay with that, because I've seen things constantly that reinforce my belief.
But once again, I wasn't trying to convince you God is real; I was trying to explain why we're saying what we're saying.
These "coincidences" are usually just a series of post hoc fallacies. "I pray to Zeus and ask him to cure by uncle's cancer, then the next day it goes into remission, so Zeus must've cured him" sorts of things.
What coincidences are so great as to support the idea that a specific god is watching over us?
Prayer is also often a form of self-deception, because people usually only pray for things they know can happen on their own, never pray for anything truly miraculous, and ignore prayers that don't have any effect. Whenever the healing power of prayer has been scientifically tested, it is always shown to have no effect other than a placebo effect.
Interesting post-- I'm the complete opposite, though; my network of Christian support is stronger at home and weaker at college. So I struggle through the year, then come home and get refreshed in breaks. My faith and personal trust in God has grown immensely this summer, though... I'm praying this fall He shows me a place where I can experience the community I've lacked in my college years so far.