The Spiritual Crisis:

How often do we hear someone describe themselves these days as “spiritual but not religious”? I used to describe myself that way before this phrase came to mean something other than I wanted to convey. Much of the talk about “spirituality” these days that has nothing to do with the kind of spirituality that the Bible talks about. True Christian spirituality is all about following the Holy Spirit. Many people believe in God, or at least “a higher power” but do not recognize that said higher power has any claim on their life, or has a right, or even an interest in how they live, or what decisions they make.

Even the church, who should know better, is confused about it’s spirituality. We have come to see ourselves as an institution rather than an organism; the body of Christ. We have lost our identity of being the hands and feet of He who is the directing head.     

About a year ago I posted an article titled It is Time for me to Weigh In, in which I talked about the tragic events at Sandy Hook Elementary and others and expressed my belief that one of the problems that we faced was that we have stopped looking to a standard of moral values that looks outward and upward to a higher standard, and that we are now looking within ourselves for our moral values. The same can be said about our spiritual lives. Instead of looking to God, and trying to connect to Him, and follow Him, we are looking within ourselves and hoping that God will follow us.

And then there’s that matter of the Biblical world view which, according to surveys conducted in recent years, most Christians seem not to have, even though most express that they believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired word of God. One of the big problems with this is that, even though Christians believe in the Bible, they don’t actually read the Bible! Their exposure to it is solely what they hear on Sunday morning, usually in their pastor’s Sunday sermon, since most individual Christian adults, not to mention many churches, have abandoned the Sunday School.

In addition to those in the pew, I am surprised to notice as I travel this land that a disturbing number of pastors are not spending time in the word either. They study enough to deliver what passes for a Sunday sermon, but it is clear that their understanding of what they are studying is shallow and cursory. This is not their fault entirely. As one who has been to seminary, I am aware that while our seminaries teach the background and structure of the Bible, there is no real exposure to the content of the Bible.  Systematic theology is taught in light of the traditions that have been brought forth from the protestant Reformation, rather than the New Testament itself. And “Biblical theology” is an elective subject that is avoided by most seminary students in favor of “pastoral care”, and various “practicums” and field study projects. In fact the only time the contents of the Bible are discussed in seminary is in the more advanced Greek and Hebrew classes which are also avoided like the plague by most students. Indeed, most either take a non-language option, if available, or they struggle through the primary language courses learning just enough to get by. I must say at this point that I am forever grateful for the Greek course I took in the beginning that not only involved grammar, vocabulary and syntax, but included reading through the Gospel of John as a practical application of what we were studying. Most seminary students do not have this kind of advantage.

Our pastors then, when they get out into the “real world” soon find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of everyday pastoral life. The administrative tasks, the pastoral care issues in counseling, the hospital visits, and just trying to steer the church activities between the confines of the annual budget, among other things, keep most pastors away from the New Testament concept of “spend[ing] . . .  time in prayer and teaching the word.(Acts 6:4).

And that brings up another issue: we don’t spend enough time in prayer. We pray, in the respect that we petition God for what we want, which we should do, but we don’t spend time listening to Him and trying to hear His voice. Listening to God in prayer is a learnable skill. I wrote a chapter about this in Going Forth in the Name (Xlibris, 2009) and we don’t really have too much time to discuss it here, but we need to spend some serious time with God, we need to learn to listen to His voice, and we need to learn how to do what He says.

I would be amused, if it were not such a serious matter, over folks I meet who seem to feel themselves superior, when they pray over their meals, to those who do not practice such. Yet they rarely spent a single moment with God in prayer that is not connected to some such ritual. Perhaps they are the reverse of the “spiritual but not religious” folks?

We also fail to understand the power of prayer. I am currently in the book of Acts in my daily Bible readings. I continue to be impressed with the way that the first century church prayed for things that only a powerful God could accomplish, and then they waited on Him to send His power, and it happened! Those folks prayed God-sized prayers, and they witnessed God-sized answers! I have noticed, sadly, a tendency for us not to expect God to do much of anything that is outside the natural realm, or outside the course of everyday life. Let's not forget James' reminder:

 

"The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. 17 Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! 18 Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops." (James 5:17-18 NLT)

We have heard many voices that try to persuade us to return to God. I believe that this is truly what we need. If there is indeed any hope for the spiritual crisis that our world faces, this is it. We need to realize that He has a plan, and He has a will, and He has a program, which He will carry out with, or without us, and it is us, not Him, that needs to get with the program.

One more thing that I feel compelled to throw in: one important issue in that program of God is to spread the Gospel to “every nation, people, tribe and tongue.” I wrote in the previous post titled So What do I Think? that it is my belief, based on the scriptures therein outlined that Christ will not return until sometime after we have completed that mission has been completed. We have become introverts when it comes to the seriousness of that mission. We must get about God’s program of “every nation, people tribe and tongue” if we expect to experience His blessing! I believe that our obedience to Him as a church on this issue will have a proportionate effect on the quality of our fellowship with Him.

So, as I said previously, we need to realize who it is that we serve, and that we can depend on Him to supply our every need and the needs of those He will lead us to minister to; and we need to become a people of prayer. This will be the beginning of our return to Him, and the beginning of the solution to our spiritual crisis.

Next time, let’s talk about that moral crisis.

 
Thanks for sharing this moment with me today