ABSTRACTION

I get a sense that in 21st century America, God is an abstraction. He is largely both unseen and unfelt. Perhaps some of that exists right within the church, too. People think they can basically please God by obeying His rules - going to church, serving, giving, being nice to their neighbor. But God wants to be less abstract - more real - than that.

People may have right theology, but they haven't understood the life application and implication of what they claim their own belief system to be.

A.W. Tozer talked about how little Christianity was built around the practical presence of God when he said: 'If the Holy Spirit were withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference.'

Ouch. How easily our religious forms outlive the reality that birthed them. We continue with the motions, but God stops becoming the object of our pursuit. When that happens, it isn't a very long road before the traditions become more sacred than than God Himself.

Obviously that is an extreme, but the impact of that is felt in so many more subtle ways, allowing us to push God out and away from our lives without even realizing or admitting to it, because His name and His activities fill so much of our lives.

We might do this with something like prayer, by launching into our day with a request that Jesus bless what we're about to engage in, and then move forward. Don't we believe He has anything more to say to us than what our own minds can reason out?

This is where we need to lose the abstract and return to the real. Today.

And be blessed.