Just Thinking

I enjoy taking my children to the pool. My daughter loves the water and has recently become more of a swimmer, so much so, that she no longer has to wear a flotation device. However, my son must wear floaties because he cannot swim. He is no tall enough to stand up in the water, nor is he strong enough to keep himself afloat without some kind of assistance. However, I am a grown man who can easily support himself in the depths. I can swim out to the deep part of the pool with no assitance needed and keep myself afloat without any assistance.

I was thinking today, however, how absurd it would look if I were to put on a pair of those orange inflatable arm floaties with pictures of happy fish all over them and stay on the shallow end of the pool and play "Marco Polo" with all of the children. If you were at the pool what would you think?

The truth is that, spiritually speaking, there is a majority of us who are doing just that. We are hanging out in the shallow end of the spiritual pool with all of the children. We are wearing our little floaties, calling out "Marco" listening for all of the other children to say, "Polo". It's not that the shallow end is a bad place to be. It isn't at all. It's safe there; it's warmer there; it's where we have fond memories. God has called us to go deeper though. Swimming in the deeper water requires that we be stronger. It requires that we use muscles that we never would have used if we had stayed in the shallow end.

Ok...enough nonsense, let me get to the point. There are too many Christians who are comfortable with superficiality. There are too many shallow Christians, myself included. God has called us to move on, to go deeper. The writer of Hebrews reminds us of this in chapter 6.

He says, "1Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, 2instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3And God permitting, we will do so."

We must move on. It is time to stop sitting in some sanctuary somewhere with our floaties on while someone else does the swimming for us. Now, I'm not saying that those who sit in sanctuaries are shallow. I'm saying as long as we are not willing to go deeper with God, we remain shallow. Unless we allow Him to speak to the depths of our hearts, we will remain shallow. As long as Jesus remains solely a man or a good prophet or just our friend, he cannot be our Lord. We must go deeper.

Richard Foster hit the nail on the head when he said in his book, Celebration of Discipline, "Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a spiritual problem."

God has called us to go deeper. We must swim out to the depths if we are going to use the spiritual muscles that God called us to use. Most importantly if we are to trust Him truly we must deflate the floaties and lean on Him as He takes us to a deeper relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.