Thursday, October 3, 2013

Are You Wearing the Right Underwear?


While I never examined sunflowers closely, I’ve admired their beauty from a distance and enjoyed eating and feeding their seeds to my feathered friends.  Last spring I planted some.  It was exciting to watch them go through each stage as they developed their huge heads.  While studying about when and how to harvest sunflower seeds, I learned of the flower’s many marvelous traits.  There is one, however, that, to me, is simply astonishing; this sun-seeker literally turns its face toward the sun as it moves across the sky throughout the day and then drops its head at the end of the day as the sun sets!  I continue to be awed by the Creator’s work!

I’ve always considered myself a “son-seeker”.  I worked carefully at following what I believed to be the movement of the One whom I worship and I labored for years to worship according to the acceptable rules.  However, there were often these irritating questions in the back of my mind:  
·        Why do I feel guilty if I don’t do it? 
·        Why do I felt inadequate when the results aren’t what I expect? 
·        Why does it often seem contrived, even in my most sincere efforts? 
·        There’s no doubt of my willingness to surrender my life for the purpose of offering life to others; however what is it about how I go about doing so that just doesn’t seem right?
In time, Father helped me to understand the importance of these questions.  He brought me to a point of realizing that I had been taught to worship as though I was still under the Law.  Under the Law, even the minutest details regarding worship were laid out by God and no variation was tolerated.  Even the kind of underwear that was to be worn during worship was explicitly commanded (Leviticus 16:4).  While the ancient and fearful rites, if performed incorrectly resulted in judgment and death (Leviticus 10:1, 2 Samuel 6:6), the followers of Jesus need not have such fears.
You may not even realize that you are trapped in such constraining legalism; therefore, I challenge you to consider:
1)      Why are you bowing your head, kneeling and singing praises when your “spiritual leader” tells you to?  Try not doing it when everyone else is.
2)      Why do you go to worship in a place where you are surrounded by all the “spiritual” trappings to worship?  Simply stay home this month.
3)      Why do you wear certain clothes when you go to this “place of worship”?  Next week, why don’t you wear your chore clothes?
4)      Why do you read the Bible and “pray” daily?  Set it aside for a week.
I’ll check in next week to see how it went.
Whole-Heartedly,
Bonnie

P.S.  Please feel free to contact me with questions, thoughts, topics you’d like to ponder or to read past articles at: http://whole-heartedlife.blogspot.com/.  You may also contact me at:
             Bonnie Jaeckle
             In Search of the Whole-Hearted Life
             Diagonal Progress
             505 Jefferson St.
             Diagonal, IA 50845




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