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The Deep End



            I saw a cartoon last which in which a couple is talking to a preacher and the wife says, “If you promise that he won’t have to say anything, sing anything or give anything, Harvey is ready to become a member of the church”.  That might be funny if it was not so true.  Many people, it seems, think that their spiritual life consists of showing up, sitting through a service and then going home.  Put in your hour per week and you have been faithful.  Unfortunately, that simply does not work. 

           Some things in life are only learned by doing.  You can read all kinds of books about driving a car, but you will not be able to handle stopping on an icy road until you get behind the wheel and do it a few times.  You can read all the romance novels you want, but you will not know what dating is really like until you go on a date.  Your first day at work will remain a mystery until you fill out the application, get a job and go in for your first day.  Faith works the same way.  While salvation is a free gift of God’s grace, until you do something about it, until you try to live your faith, it is all just theory and good ideas. 

           That is the point of Romans chapter twelve.  It begins, “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (verse 1).  The chapter then goes on to list more than fifty different ways that they could put their “worship” in action.  The list includes things like: serve, encourage, give, show mercy, be cheerful, be generous, cling to what is good, be joyful, be hopeful, be patient, practice hospitality, living in harmony with others, feed your enemies and (the last line of the chapter that sums it all up) “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (for a full list see Romans 12:2-21).  Obviously, faith is meant to be an active, not passive.

            When I was young, my mom used to take me to a paddle pool at a park near our house.  I would splash around in there and think that I was swimming.  In reality, I was not “swimming” so much as I was “crawling” on the bottom of the pool.

            The point:  You cannot learn to swim in the paddling pool.  If you want to really swim, you have to go to the deep end.

            Similarly, faith will never mature if we only play around in the shallow end.  For faith to deepen it must be active and alive.

The deep end awaits.

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