Conviction

Today a bunch of friends and I decided to walk a 1/4 mile and just pray to God. I was expecting a passionate, warming spiritual experience. What I found was that a lot of us abandoned the prayer for goofing off, talking. "A whole quarter mile talking to God, O what fun," some of us grumbled. As I walked, praying, God spoke to my heart.

We went for a quarter mile walk (turned out to be a mile, but that's beside the point). What is wrong with us? Why can't we find time to pray to God - to talk to God - for a mile? God made MILLIONS and MILLIONS of miles on His green earth, and we can't take the time to walk one of them, and just thank Him for what He has done for us, given to us; we can't walk a mile talking to God. If we really knew who God was, we'd be saying, "Only a mile! Let's walk the earth seventy-seven times around and sing praises to our King!" Even the angels in heaven praise and worship God 24/7, forever and ever, and never tire, never grow bored, because they know who God is, they know how God is, they really understand the power of the God they worship.

A lot of this probably stems from the way we view prayer; we say, "Oh, we're talking to God," when we ought to be saying, "God! Oh my gosh! I'm talking to the Creator of the Cosmos, the Righteous Judge, the Sovereign and Strong, the God of Love, the God of Wrath! I am speaking to the One who puts breath in my lungs and allows me to wake up each morning! I am talking to the One who will bring up and bring down nations, who will exact revenge on the ungodly! I am speaking to the One who existed, exists, and forever exists! Me, a measly, worthless human am speaking to the Great God of the Universe! Because He wants me to and I want to!"

We need to take God seriously. Distant prayers, failed bouts against sin, empty and hollow spirituality all stem, I believe, from us not taking God seriously. When we don't thank God for what He has given us, when we decide not to open our Bibles, when we don't tell our friends about the awesome God we serve, all this is derived - I believe - from our not really taking God seriously. We go to church, we say, "When is this over?" We don't take God seriously. We sing praises to God's name, we just want it to end so we can sit down, our legs hurt - we don't take God seriously. We think of God, and when we hear fear of God, we laugh. We don't take God seriously. If we really understood the Holiness, the Glory, the Might, the Love, the Wrath, the Sufficiency, Soveriegnity of God, we would fall down in sheer terror. Job caught a mere glance of God and cursed himself. Habakkuk, on seeing God's power, went silent before Him. Isaiah, in seeing the King Almighty, shouted, "Woe is me!" (Isaiah 6:5) We would, too, I believe, if we really took God seriously and understood how amazing He really is.

What would change if we really began to take God seriously, if we had "faith like a mustard seed"? How would God work through us? How would God put His hands on us like never before? How would we move through our world? If we really took God seriously, would we be able to perform miraculous healings, exorcise demons, perform miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit - the same Holy Spirit of the book of Acts?

I believe, if we really took God seriously, a lot of things would change.