I like questions. I learn better when I'm asked questions, I teach by asking questions. The most important and impactful events in my life have been preceded by questions. I can specifically remember, word for word, several of them. "What has the Holy Spirit done in your life this year?" "Did you ever think about you and me, maybe, sometime, getting married?" "Has (Gabe) changed your life?"
Questions make you think about what you're doing or thinking and come up with a response. You are forced into interactions with the other person and within your own mind and soul that statements and suggestions don't necessitate. If you find me asking you a question (especially a leading question that promotes deep thought and soul-searching) don't think that I am singling you out with some ulterior motive and grand intention. Asking questions has just become a part of how I communicate, it's not specifically contrived for each encounter (although sometimes it is--now I'm just going to leave you guessing).
But the answer to this question, "Are you seeking Christ?" is an answer you have to give, to yourself. My friend didn't have to tell me her answer. She doesn't owe me an update of her spiritual life, but we were having a conversation that led to me asking the question and we were sharing in a way that made the question relevant rather than invasive. At least, that's how I saw it; and, I hope she did as well. Questions can feel like interrogation, but they usually only feel that way if we sense that the one asking them has ulterior, sinister motives or if they make us consider and defend things about ourselves that we'd rather ignore.
I was in college when I was asked, "What has the Holy Spirit done in your life this year?" I knew there was no sinister plot on the part of the questioner to expose the evidence of my shallow profession. That question hit me square between the eyes because the only truthful answer required me facing my own reality. Knowing that I had a totally fruitless Christian profession and laying out the proof of it in the form of an honest answer were two totally different realities.
We need real. We need to have our eyes opened to who we are to know what we do and why we do it. But that wasn't why I asked my friend this question. I asked her because she was dealing with some hard things in her life and I truly wanted to know if she was seeking the first and best and most important antidote to hardship, sorrow, grief, or despair. I remember the quote, "Tough times call for tough measures." I'm not sure what a tough measure is exactly, but I know that tough times call for seeking Christ.
Not seeking Christ will lead to something called "practical atheism". That is exactly what I was experiencing when I was asked about the Holy Spirit working in my life--a life with no evidence of nearness to Christ. I suppose I could have been asked if I was seeking Christ and it may have produced the same uncomfortable response. Practical atheism is living like there is no God, while not necessarily holding to the theory or belief that there is no God. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle that can get you by if you live a socially moral life and obey laws. But it inevitably leads to a lonely, broken end.
I wasn't asking my friend if she was seeking God because I thought she might be headed toward practical atheism. I really did want to know that she was tapping into the source of life. I want you all to be tapping into the source of life. I know how bland it feels to not be intentionally connected to that life source. And I know how amazing and life changing it is to be connected. Jesus Christ really is a fountain of life-giving water!
My reason for directing you to the idea of practical atheism comes from something I read with Keith this morning that tied so wonderfully into the whole idea of seeking Christ. We were talking, about a week ago, about Christians who turn from Christ and God. We were wondering, how does one go from professing Jesus, the Son of God is King to living like He isn't King to doubting that God exists to denying Him altogether? I considered that the answer was sin. In my own experience and in observing others it appears that either an acceptance of sin or a refusal to call something sin/wrong is the stepping stone to eventually denying the existence of God. If I believe in God and I believe the Bible is His Word then I have to recognize my actions as sinful. How can I get around that? I deny God. I shut my eyes and say I don't see Him. I know, I tried it, in a practical if not theoretical way.
So, how do you keep from going there? No Christian ever plans to go there. We seem to think our Christian life is like a large plateau with a sharp-edged pit that lead to destruction. As long as we stay away from that edge we won't fall. But there's no edge. There's not flat top with steep side, up or down. There are slopes, gradual slopes. There are turns and and twist spirals that go up and down, like walking a undulating path, some incline, some decline. It all feels about the same. We get comfortable at lower and lower depths. We walk from the sun into the shadows and back into the sun. The shadows are caused by clouds or trees or a turn in the bend that lets us know the landscape above us is looming higher than we realized. But, there's still light. It may not be direct but it's obviously daylight. It doesn't have to be direct and we don't have to be up on top of the mountain/hill/plateau. We can get along just fine down along a lower road. We get used to not having the direct sunlight and soon find it too glaring and direct. It makes us uncomfortable. We're not opposed to the light, we know it's there but we like it well-filtered. We become gradually desensitized to the dark and our eyes grow more and more accustomed to it. Then, without warning, we trip on obstacles we can no longer see and we plunge headlong into a darkness that we never intended to embrace.
Somewhere along that path, everywhere along that path, we need to be asking ourselves, "Am I seeking Christ?" Is He back in the light while we're walking away from it? How do we draw near it?
In reading A Portait of God by Daniel Chamberlin, a 21st century summarization of Stephen Charnock's Discourse Upon the Existence and Attributes of God (written in the 1600s) this morning we came across four steps for "every believer in Christ (to) mortify practical atheism".
1) Pray and meditate on God. Stay near Him. "Distance is the first step to disaffection."
2) Prize and study the Scripture. Memorize it and remind yourself of it. I recommend picking one passage/chapter/book that becomes your personal mantra for a season. Read it, reread it, regurgitate it, live it. Let it become part of you. Then move to another.
3) Beware of sensual pleasures. Christians have a reputation of trying to "take the fun out" of everything. That reputation generally comes from those who want the fun for the purpose of self-gratification to an extent of replacing gratification from God. "Nothing is more apt to quench our appetite for God than addiction to worldly pleasures." Sensual pleasures have their place. It's not a high place.
4) Guard against sin. "When you deliberately sin, your soul becomes fertile soil for the growth of a fatal crop of practical atheism." James 1:15 "Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death."
I love the words from Helen Lemmel's hymn
Turn you eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Are you seeking Christ?
