We live in a world that is always right there in front of our face. And it can be easy to let our carnal everyday lives take precedence over our spiritual lives. (Which one do we think about or tend to more?) We feed our bodies but not our spirit. This is the reason for the analogy about the pinnacle spiritual events in our lives. If we only live life in the flesh or mainly in the flesh and expect a youth camp or a Revival to get us back on track, how can we say that our hearts belong to Jesus? How can we say that our lives belong?

Matthew 6:21 and again in Luke the Bible says that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” You should not need a revival every summer to help you get your life back on track. We do not need a “Revival” but a continuous “vival.” A continuous and humble renewal of our love for our Savior.

This brings me back to the two words that I was thinking about when I began the last post: Uncomfortable and Belong. Jesus says in John 15:19 that ” If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” As Christians we are not called to feel comfortable here. I am trying to write this post, leaving a lot of loose ends. Not making everything crystal clear. (If everything is crystal clear to you up to this point I am sorry. I did a better job than I intended to.)  So that you are uncomfortable with what I am writing. So that you have questions. Questions are good. Questions like: Where are you on a scale of comfortability? Are you a 10? (Totally comfortable.)

Maybe, when we begin to feel uncomfortable we are just beginning to get somewhere. We are just beginning to find our place and belong.  But for many of us, we have not yet even reached Nazareth.

Everyday we wake up, brush our teeth (hopefully), some shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, kiss our families goodbye, and head off to our schools or vocations just in time to catch the proverbial roller coaster which we all call “life.” Sometimes it is an “up” day and sometimes it is a “down” day. But no matter how “up” or “down” our lives may be, there is one thing that we should constantly strive to keep “up:” (whatever you may want to call it, be it our faith, or our spirit man, or just our spirit). The Bible references many times to be “in” the world but not “of” the world. So from this I would make the call that we have to see that which is carnal as carnal and that which is spiritual as spiritual and deal with it accordingly. I am not saying that sometimes these two elements do not cross paths but I do not think that our carnal lives should dictate our MOTIVATION in our spiritual lives. They are one but separate.

To give you an example of what I am writing about I will make this statement: We should not have to have youth camps, or worship services, or retreats, to keep our faith alive, to keep our faith growing and moving and changing. God is not JUST at camp. I am not saying that these events were not and are not important in our lives. Because for how many of us was it a youth camp or a worship service or a retreat the point that jump started our faith and got us back on the right track? As young Christians these are the events where the relevance of God shows up in lives. As Christians we NEED these things. But as we mature in our faith, if we want to mature, these things can no longer be the pinnacle of our faith. Do not get me wrong, they are still VERY important and God still moves in these services whether young or mature in faith. But if we do nothing in the time between them, how should we expect to grow?

We can no longer live our faith out from one special service to another special service. Just barely getting by. With no MOTIVATION in between. Just barely sticking with it.

Now I am sure that after reading that you have lots of thoughts and maybe some questions. Good. Think about them.