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
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