I went to bed last night singing Not For A Moment by Meredith Andrews and the Vertical Church Band. I had dreams with Not For A Moment as the musical score. I woke up this morning singing Not For A Moment. All day long the song was in my heart.
This afternoon as I was driving, I was thinking about my current job situation. I began to compare myself with other people that I thought were inferior. It started to irritate me that less experienced, less qualified...and let's face it, less Christian people were finding and securing proper employment and I wasn't. Just then, Not For A Moment began to play again in my head and I got angry. For the first time, I realized that I was angry at God. I felt entitled to more than I have received from His hand and I was not happy.
As the song continued to play in my head, I realized that since last night the Holy Spirit was trying to show me something through the words of the chorus of that song:
After all, You are constant
After all, You are only good
After all, You are sovereign
Not for a moment will You forsake me.
The underlying sentiment in that song is gratitude. Heart-felt gratitude. And as the Holy Spirit was ministering to me through that song, He was also showing me that I was being ungrateful and hypocritical. He brought to mind something I wrote in yesterday's blog post about my current job being a sort of Brook Cherith. He reminded me that I wrote that I don't complain out loud. He really took me to the mat (to borrow a phrase from Pastor James MacDonald). The Holy Spirit showed me just how much I murmured and complained about my job in my heart, even though I smile and say how grateful I am for an income. He showed me how much I resented going there each morning. He showed me how much I felt like God was short-changing me and being unfair.
It was so shocking to me to see how my attitude of ingratitude had developed into latent, unrepented sin and I did not recognize it. All along, I have been giving God mere lip-service when I talked about being grateful because the truth is I have been feeling like I deserved something more...something better. My unthankfulness was blossoming into something much more dangerous ...I was beginning to question God's very nature.
No wonder Paul warned the Romans (1:21), "...for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."
As it turns out, this inconvenient Christianity is even more inconvenient than I realized. So please, I implore you as a fellow follower of Christ, be sure to let your heart's gratitude match the words that come from your lips.
This afternoon as I was driving, I was thinking about my current job situation. I began to compare myself with other people that I thought were inferior. It started to irritate me that less experienced, less qualified...and let's face it, less Christian people were finding and securing proper employment and I wasn't. Just then, Not For A Moment began to play again in my head and I got angry. For the first time, I realized that I was angry at God. I felt entitled to more than I have received from His hand and I was not happy.
As the song continued to play in my head, I realized that since last night the Holy Spirit was trying to show me something through the words of the chorus of that song:
After all, You are constant
After all, You are only good
After all, You are sovereign
Not for a moment will You forsake me.
The underlying sentiment in that song is gratitude. Heart-felt gratitude. And as the Holy Spirit was ministering to me through that song, He was also showing me that I was being ungrateful and hypocritical. He brought to mind something I wrote in yesterday's blog post about my current job being a sort of Brook Cherith. He reminded me that I wrote that I don't complain out loud. He really took me to the mat (to borrow a phrase from Pastor James MacDonald). The Holy Spirit showed me just how much I murmured and complained about my job in my heart, even though I smile and say how grateful I am for an income. He showed me how much I resented going there each morning. He showed me how much I felt like God was short-changing me and being unfair.
It was so shocking to me to see how my attitude of ingratitude had developed into latent, unrepented sin and I did not recognize it. All along, I have been giving God mere lip-service when I talked about being grateful because the truth is I have been feeling like I deserved something more...something better. My unthankfulness was blossoming into something much more dangerous ...I was beginning to question God's very nature.
No wonder Paul warned the Romans (1:21), "...for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."
As it turns out, this inconvenient Christianity is even more inconvenient than I realized. So please, I implore you as a fellow follower of Christ, be sure to let your heart's gratitude match the words that come from your lips.
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