When I was little, there was a woman at church who would always go to the front of the room and dance very expressively, when worship started. I grew up in a church where most people danced but they didn’t rush to the front of the room, they simply danced at their seat or in an aisle. I would often find myself watching her and in my great wisdom (I was probably all of 10 years old, so I knew everything already) I would think “she shouldn’t do that, she’s distracting people, does she just want everyone to see her, that’s not very godly”. One week, as we walked to the car after church, I voiced these thoughts to my dad, expecting him to agree with my wisdom and commend me for my maturity. I will never forget the look of disappointment that crossed his face (I’m tearing up as I write this because it comes back to my mind’s eye so vividly) which startled me because it was the last thing I expected to see. He gently grabbed my shoulders and turned me to look directly into his eyes and he said something to me which has been a hallmark and cornerstone in my life. He said “Babydoll, why are you so concerned with someone else’s worship? All you’ve told me is that you have been looking at the wrong thing. You haven’t been focusing on God. You don’t have the right to judge another’s worship when you aren’t even offering up your own.” I was hurt by what he said because I always wanted to make him proud and I felt like I’d let him down but his words captured my attention. The next Sunday as my eyes would drift to the lady dancing at the front (who I have to tell you was one of the sweetest most sincere people you could ever meet) I remembered what my dad said and I turned my concentration back to God.
Now that I have added enough years to my age to recognize that I really know very little I still cling to those words my dad spoke to me a lifetime ago, “…you have been looking at the wrong thing. You haven’t been focusing on God.” They come to me when I feel like something is askew in my world. These words have led me time and time again to seek out other words that keep moving me in the same direction that my dad pointed to so many moons ago; “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Isaiah 26:3, “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.” Psalm 112:7 (this one held me afloat the year my dad died), “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.” Psalm 91:14
In our Christian platitudes we often compare Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with the physical Sun. We talk about how our lives are supposed to revolve around Jesus “the Son” the way our planet revolves around the Sun and this is true but it doesn’t encompass the whole truth. It’s not a full picture because, while we’re encouraged not to look directly at the Sun, lest we be blinded (expensive eclipse glasses ring a bell), if we stop looking at Jesus we will spin out of our proper orbit. Hebrews 12:1-2 encourages us to “…run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith…” Some translations say “fixing your eyes on Jesus” and I love the way that this wording illustrates the point. If I am fixed or fixated on something then all my concentration is on it. The next verse, Hebrews 12:3 hits this point again when it encourages us to “consider him…so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted”. Thinking carefully about Jesus, about every facet of him, is critical if we want to grow in our faith. It is even more critical if we are feeling our faith slipping away.
In the past several years I have watched as people who I know, love and admire have turned away from the church, their faith and ultimately Jesus. These people run the gamut from dear friends to acquaintances to artists, teachers and musicians who I may not personally know but who have deeply impacted my life. I have observed some key commonalities among these souls. Each of them started out with passion about something good; social justice projects like fighting poverty and rescuing people trafficked in sex trades, challenging hypocrisy and sin in the house of God, helping others to find healing from life’s wounds, teaching people how to exercise self-care so as not to become burnt out by life, all really good things, important things, necessary things to be passionate about.
I have noticed that in each of these situations the slide away from faith always starts with a shift in focus. It usually comes out as hyper-awareness of the cause that they’re involved with. This is the most dangerous moment because they still think they are okay. They repeat certain popular verses and quotes repeatedly (i.e. “faith without works is dead” or “I need to put my oxygen mask on before I can help another put theirs on”) to justify the intensity of their focus on their passion but if you’re listening you’ll notice little shifts that show a new shallowness to the scope of their conversation. They stop talking about the spiritual thrust behind their good works. They stop bringing new insights from the Word of God into conversation. They begin to talk more about the difficulties of what they’re pursuing than the gains. That’s always how it starts, a subtle shift in focus.
The next thing that I have seen is a distancing from the church. This often starts with quiet complaints about how people aren’t embracing their cause or statements about how “this church isn’t meeting my needs”. They will begin to ask questions like “how can a loving God allow so much pain and evil in the world?”. You’ll start hearing them talk about hypocrisy in the church and they’ll regularly talk about people who they’ve met through their causes who don’t follow God but are absolutely incredible people. I get this, I really do! I struggle with the church because I have grown up in the church and have pastors hanging off so many branches of my family tree it’s astonishing. I have seen the good, bad and ugly in every shape and form. I’ve taught Sunday School for every age group from infant to adult. I have worked at a bible college, Christian theatre and church finance office. I have been a youth leader, worship leader and dramatic arts leader. I have taught, preached, counseled and then some. I’m just trying to point out that when it comes to church stuff I have been around. I have seen abuses of every kind take place inside a church. I have been verbally abused by leaders who were supposed to care for my soul. I have watched precious men and women get used up and tossed away without so much as an apology. I have seen people full of hope get crushed over and over until their hope is dashed. In all that I have seen and experienced I have come to this one overwhelming conclusion about the church. It is full of people and people are the worst! I love going to church when no one is there and the building is quiet and peaceful but I realize that the instant I walk into that quiet and peaceful building I have just ruined it. I am a people and I am the worst! This is part of the problem with losing focus on Jesus. The instant you stop focusing on him you stop looking at people through his grace-filled eyes. You begin to concentrate on the ugliness in the church and not the incredible work that God is doing as he purifies his people. Honestly, there are some days when I am standing on the stage getting ready to help lead worship and I look at the congregation and I think “boy, it’s a good thing I’m already saved because if you told me that becoming a Christian meant I would have to be like these people I would run as fast and as far as I could”. I’m pretty sure that there are people who think that when they look at me too (as previously mentioned I am the worst!). The beauty is that when I fix my eyes on Jesus, when I remember not to judge the lady dancing wildly at the front of the sanctuary, I find myself loving all of these people. I remember that they are just like me and if Jesus can make something valuable out of my life then he can do the same with all these other messes in the church. There is incredible strength, compassion, wisdom, joy, comfort, love and so many other amazing qualities that are revealed in the church when our focus is in the right place. It doesn’t mean that we ignore or gloss over the issues, it simply puts the issues in the frame of God’s greater picture and provides the grace to work through them. When we stop focusing on Jesus we get hyper-critical of everyone but ourselves. We either get so focused on what we think are their problems that we forget that we must choose to love one another or we get so focused on our value that we devalue those people who don’t measure up to our standards.
The final step in this slide away from faith is sliding away from Jesus. It generally comes with lots of uses of the word “spiritual” instead of “Christian”. There’s a concentration on how everything feels instead of what the Bible says about a situation. The biggest sign is when they stop using the name Jesus. Why? When you personalize someone by calling them by name you have to recognize who they are. I have a friend who became deeply offended with a family member and over time I noticed that my friend just stopped calling this person by name. They would refer to them by title “my _____” in conversation so you’d know who they were talking about but when these people were in the same room my friend would never once say the other persons name. It was weird to say the least. I have also seen the reverse where someone referred to another person by a term of endearment but after an argument began to call that person by their formal first name. What you call someone and how you refer to them speaks volumes about your relationship. When people stop using the name Jesus it speaks of broken relationship. If they haven’t completely walked away from their faith yet then you’ll usually hear them use Christ or simply God instead of Jesus. A simple Google search (or several years studying theology) will show you that Christ is not Jesus’ last name. Christ is a title indicating that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah. In the original Greek it is Christos and it means anointed one. When you say Christ you are referring to an office not a person. It’s the same with God. That is not a name, it is a descriptor. God never reveals his name, although in the Bible he gives us many things to call him based on his character, and so we use the term god which refers to a supreme being and we spell it with a capital G to indicate that he is the highest, most supreme but it’s not his name. The Bible has a lot to say about the name Jesus. Acts 4 shows us Peter and John talking to the religious leaders about a crippled man who had been healed. In verse 10 Peter says “let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well.” Peter goes on to make a very powerful statement in verse 12, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Peter doesn’t say there’s no other title or term. He says there is no other NAME. In Luke 1:31 the angel, Gabriel, comes to Mary to announce God’s plan to bring a Savior into the world. Gabriel give specific instructions about the name of the Messiah. He told Mary “you shall call his name Jesus.” In Matthew 1:20-21 an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and instructs him to name the baby Jesus. In verse 25 of the same chapter it says “And he called his name Jesus”. One of my favorite verses about the name of Jesus is Philippians 2:9-11 “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” There is so much importance tied up in the name of Jesus which is why it is such a glaring signal when someone stops using it. As I mentioned before, it speaks of broken relationship.
My Grandma Maxwell used to sit at the piano and sing old hymns and through her I learned to treasure some of the old songs that we don’t often sing anymore. One of my favorites is this one:
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
O’er us sin no more hath dominion—
For more than conqu’rors we are!
His Word shall not fail you—He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!
Turn your 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.
As Christians, anointed ones, we are supposed to impact the world around us. We’re supposed to do justly and love mercy. Luke 10:27 tells us that we have two major functions. First “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,” and secondly we love “your neighbor as yourself.” When we put the second part ahead of the first then we lose focus. When we don’t love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind we lose purpose. If our focus remains on Jesus then we will not be destroyed. We won’t be left unfinished or without purpose. Look at Hebrews 12:2 again “ looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Focus on Jesus, the founder and perfecter and you will be established and made complete. It takes time, effort and practice to focus on Jesus but it’s the same in any relationship. If you want to know someone you spend time and you concentrate on them. If you find your focus shifting and your heart becoming unsettled ask yourself “What are you looking at?”
Prayer, Praise, and Ice Cream 