Daily devotion – bored?
Have you ever heard these words spoken, ‘Church is boring?”
It’s a word used often today by a society that cannot sit in silence, that cannot be without a mobile phone in their hands to regularly check and see that nothing has changed since the last minute they looked.
When the power goes out or the internet goes down, some people protest as if their world was about to end.
Have you heard the word parable? The word parable comes from a Greek word that means “to throw alongside.” Jesus the world’s greatest ever teacher had people even walk away from His teaching.
Jesus used the familiar to teach the unfamiliar (things new and old) – Matthew 13:52 – Then he added, “Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old.”
Jesus did this not to hide the truth by speaking in parables but to AROUSE interest in the truth – 12 To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. 13 That is why I use these parables,
For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.
14 This fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that says, ‘When you hear what I say, you will not understand. When you see what I do,
you will not comprehend. 15 For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes—
so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me
and let me heal them.’
Jesus wanted to get the people to open their spiritual eyes and ears and receive the truth into their sluggish hearts.
The teaching or preaching of the Word of God is never boring as it is the God breathed Words of God….!
Two people can sit in Church together listen to a sermon, one is bored and inattentive, the other is enamoured and amazed at how God is speaking directly into their lives and into their heart.
Would you have turned away from Jesus teaching in parables or would you have been even more ravenous to know exactly what Jesus was teaching and what it meant for you?
If you find yourself being bored or your children complain as such, it’s time to examine your heart and your spiritual ears. Has your heart grown cold, stale and hardened due to it not being fed on the Word of God, or softened by prayer?
Are you ears dammed up with the noise and clatter of the world so much so that you have become deaf to He who spoke and a dead man by the name of Lazarus was brought back from the dead?
A boring life is a life without Christ as one’s Lord and Saviour. For how could anyone who has a living relationship with the Son of God, Creator of Heaven and earth, ever be bored!