(I’ve written about this before, but it could have been better. So here’s my revision.)
When I was a teenager, I sold fireworks at my buddy’s fireworks stand around the holidays to earn some part time cash. As a result of my long hours spent selling fireworks as a boy, I don’t really care for fireworks as an adult.
In fact, I’m completely uninterested in them. I could probably sleep like a baby through the biggest fireworks show on earth.
Just before Jesus’ arrest and subsequent crucifixion, we read this verse:
Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”
Matthew 26:45
That’s right. At the most crucial hour in the ministry of the Son of God, His inner circle was caught sleeping on the job. How did that happen? It happens all the time.
It’s really easy to become way too familiar with something spectacular. And before you know it, you’re taking it for granted.
I’m guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit. I become familiar with the fireworks of the activity of God here at Elevation. I forget that what we’re seeing the Lord do here is something very special, very unique, and worthy of thanks and praise.
Many of you who started out in the ministry with a deep sense of humility and gratitude that God would ever use someone like you have since gotten familiar with the fireworks. Now you’re going through the ministry motions. It’s just a job.
Many of you who came to Christ out of a very sinful past were overwhelmed by the grace of God for your first few years as a Christian. You were hungry for the Word of God, constant in prayer, and overflowing with thanksgiving. But somewhere along the line, you got familiar with the fireworks. Now, you treat your salvation as commonplace, and have lost perspective on how costly and remarkable the love of Jesus really is.
It happens in marriages.
You used to light up when she walked in the room.
7 years later, you barely notice.
It happens as God blesses us financially.
You had no problem tithing and trusting the Lord with your possessions when you made $500 a week. But now that God has brought you into a place of plenty, you consider yourself a self made man. You’ve forgotten that God is the source, everything else is just a resource.
In every area of our lives, we have a proclivity to perpetually lose sight of how far God has brought us. It is so easy to become familiar with the fireworks, and take God’s grace for granted.
Repent today by remembering where you’d be without the mercy of Jesus.
And proactively praise God for who He is, what He’s done, and the amazing things He’s going to do.