THE RELIGIOUS BRUSH-OFF

Have you ever gotten the "religious brush-off?"

Here's how it works.

You are given a responsibility by your church.

In the carrying out of that responsibility, you must coordinate with others, each of whom is given a part of the job of seeing that the overall responsibility is accomplished.

In the course of preparation, someone takes his part of the job somewhat less than seriously and the result is that the overall responsibility does not get accomplished like it should.

When confronted, the "slacker" gives you this number: "Oh well, Jesus can use whatever we have for His purpose."

That, my friend, is the "religious brush-off."

It is designed to let the offending party off the hook.

Fact is, he was too lazy, too pre-occupied, too lackadaisical or too whatever to realize how important his part of the operation was and tried to sluff off his failure on God.

That is an abomination, and is inexcusable.

Not that God won't forgive. Not even that God won't use what is left.

But it demonstrates the contemporary attitude toward God that He is a sweet little grandfather type who really does not deserve any more than a passing hug as we enter into His presence.

The splitting of a single atom releases enormous power in the form of energy.

The universe is made up of trillions of atoms to the trillionth power, each of which has the power of an atomic bomb.

God is more powerful than all of them all put together.

His right hand spans the universe that contains all of that energy.

We serve a God who is to be feared...which is the beginning of wisdom.

Now, I know that He is love. I know that He is merciful. I know that He is forgiving.

But when we substitute "respect" for "fear," we miss the point of whom we serve.

The Bible does not say, nor does it mean, "The respect of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

It says, and means, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Until we recognized how fearful it is to be out of the graces of the Mighty Creator of the universe, we cannot begin to know how badly we need to repent and submit to His awesome power.

When we do, we then can realize His forgiveness, mercy, grace and Fathership, through Christ.

Until we do, we will continue to count as unimportant giving Him the very best we have, every minute of every day.

When we have a responsibility to serve Him, we need to remember who it is we are serving and what an honor it is to be entrusted with service to Him.

We will never reach perfection, but we should, no, must strive to give our best to Him in whatever it is He has asked us to do.

After all, He gave His very best for us.