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jculp123180
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Practice for Practice's Sake Gets Old
I was talking to my pastor about a week ago and learned something about the body of Christ. I was telling him that I am planning on quitting Seminary after this year. I started college right after high school and have basically never quit. In addition, I have worked at least full-time since I was in the ninth grade. I'm pretty burnt out on school and I'm ready to take a break and actually have time to be involved in what my church is doing.
We were talking about the Christian life, particularly in Bible School, and about how easy it is to let the Word of God become academic. It doesn't take long when you're reading the Bible every day for class and writing theology papers all the time for your devotional life to just sort of fade away. It really does take a huge amount of effort to keep it going. I looked at my journal a few weeks ago and the last time I had written in it was in 2004. I realized that I failed to heed the warnings that they gave us at the beginning, and let the Bible simply become my textbook.
Later that afternoon my pastor and I were talking about other things, one of which was learning how to play the guitar. I tried to learn the guitar back when I started Bible College but I quickly got bored with it. I practiced every day of the week, sometimes for hours at a time, and I just didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. My Pastor told me that when he first started to learn guitar, someone found out and asked him to lead worship for his youth group. Because of this, he was forced to learn it even when he didn't really feel like it. He said, "Yeah, sometimes practice for practice's sake gets old." I've never heard that statement before, and I said "Wow."
I can almost pinpoint the time when I quit having regular devotions at the same time when I started taking 19 credit hours and joined a church that didn't have a place for me to serve. I sat there looking for something to do and eventually became frustrated and just lost interest. I could have daily devotions, I could get closer to God and learn from His word, but the only motivation I had was selfish in nature, I didn't have an outlet. It's not that I decided one day that I was going to stop praying regularly, I just gradually let it become less of a priority in my life, and 2 years later I caught myself paying the price.
I seriously think that when Paul used building metaphors to refer to the Church, or when the Church is referred to using pictures of a human body, they meant what I am finally realizing. When the Pastor said "Practice for practice's sake gets old," he was talking about learning how to play guitar, but I think the concept can also apply to learning to be a part of the body of Christ. If you're not involved in some fashion in accomplishing God's work, the devotional life gets old and your spiritual life will suffer.
I was talking to my pastor about a week ago and learned something about the body of Christ. I was telling him that I am planning on quitting Seminary after this year. I started college right after high school and have basically never quit. In addition, I have worked at least full-time since I was in the ninth grade. I'm pretty burnt out on school and I'm ready to take a break and actually have time to be involved in what my church is doing.
We were talking about the Christian life, particularly in Bible School, and about how easy it is to let the Word of God become academic. It doesn't take long when you're reading the Bible every day for class and writing theology papers all the time for your devotional life to just sort of fade away. It really does take a huge amount of effort to keep it going. I looked at my journal a few weeks ago and the last time I had written in it was in 2004. I realized that I failed to heed the warnings that they gave us at the beginning, and let the Bible simply become my textbook.
Later that afternoon my pastor and I were talking about other things, one of which was learning how to play the guitar. I tried to learn the guitar back when I started Bible College but I quickly got bored with it. I practiced every day of the week, sometimes for hours at a time, and I just didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. My Pastor told me that when he first started to learn guitar, someone found out and asked him to lead worship for his youth group. Because of this, he was forced to learn it even when he didn't really feel like it. He said, "Yeah, sometimes practice for practice's sake gets old." I've never heard that statement before, and I said "Wow."
I can almost pinpoint the time when I quit having regular devotions at the same time when I started taking 19 credit hours and joined a church that didn't have a place for me to serve. I sat there looking for something to do and eventually became frustrated and just lost interest. I could have daily devotions, I could get closer to God and learn from His word, but the only motivation I had was selfish in nature, I didn't have an outlet. It's not that I decided one day that I was going to stop praying regularly, I just gradually let it become less of a priority in my life, and 2 years later I caught myself paying the price.
I seriously think that when Paul used building metaphors to refer to the Church, or when the Church is referred to using pictures of a human body, they meant what I am finally realizing. When the Pastor said "Practice for practice's sake gets old," he was talking about learning how to play guitar, but I think the concept can also apply to learning to be a part of the body of Christ. If you're not involved in some fashion in accomplishing God's work, the devotional life gets old and your spiritual life will suffer.