October 8, 2004

            Being passive doesn’t work well in the spiritual realm.  Many Christians say that they want to have a more meaningful spiritual life and yet invest no significant effort in the cultivation of that deeper life.

            Thronged by people entranced by His talk of a “higher life”, Jesus was often met by folks who wanted only short-cuts and easy access into God’s favor.

            But Jesus' invitation to know God wasn’t at all an implication that God was ready to “wait” upon the table of our dreams and wants, taking our order for spiritual blessings while we sit and gab away our lives, asking us, “Do you want Me to Supersize that?”

            Jesus’ invitation was always on His terms and on His timetable.  Furthermore, His invitation always required a response… “Come and see” (John 1:39), “Follow Me” (John 1:43), “Fill the jars” (John 2:7), “Take these out” (2:16), “Give Me a drink of water” (John 4:7); “Go and call your husband” (John 4:16), “Go” (4:44), “Stand up” (John 5:8), and so on and on. 

The response necessary for us to enter a position to grow spiritually and experience God is first a yielding of our hearts and minds and then a reordering of our attitudes, plans and activities.  Real faith, after all, cannot help but manifest itself somehow in our physical lives.

Sadly, when we fail to actively receive His invitation to join Him and know Him, we put God off and miss out on experiencing His work in our lives.  When we refuse to walk away from our pasts and our ambitions for the future and choose to live instead on our own terms and on our own timelines, we can simply not experience God as He desires us to and we can never fully know all He COULD have done had we allowed Him to get us into a position to bless us.

            But if we thirst for God’s Higher Life made available to us through faith in Jesus Christ, we MUST respond and follow.  We MUST get up off our proverbial posteriors and follow Him as He leads us by His Holy Spirit.

            “(Jesus) cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me, and let the one who believes in Me drink.  As the Scripture has said, “Out of the Believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-38 RSV).

            Let us understand that we are challenged to actively pursue a deeper and more vital relationship with God.  Let us believe that there is more to this life than the routine of each day.  Let us trust that the “trivial” can be “Supersized” opportunities when in the hands of God.  And let us embrace the fact that it is the Father’s will for us to have a more exciting life at the hands of the infinite God of the universe then those of a finite world.

Are you ready then to believe that God has more in store for you than you can ever hoped for or even imagined?

            As you earnestly and actively work to cultivate a deeper relationship with God (in the context of His Bible, prayer and a church family) expect God to work in your heart in such a way that He’ll lay before you an invitation to get up from what you’ve always been and always known and go with Him.

            There will be times when He’ll “Wow us” with His presence, love and works and we will hear Him say in the still small voice He whispers to our hearts, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” (John 11:40 RSV).

(Thom Mollohan has ministered in southern Ohio the past nine years and is the pastor of Pathway Community Church.   He and his wife are the parents of three children with another on the way!   He may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).