Deep Simplicity

Have you ever heard the saying, “American Christianity is three thousand miles wide and only one inch deep?” Well, I don’t know about you but that statement kind of makes me both mad and sad at the same time. It makes me mad because as a person who is a US citizen and one who claims the title of Christian, it says that there doesn’t seem to be much depth to me when it comes to my walk with Jesus. It makes me sad because after visiting another part of the world in September of 2009 and seeing how Christians live there, I kind of agree with it.
What are you trying to say Phil, that all Christians in the USA are shallow? No please don’t take it that way. What I am trying to say is that we need to take a look at ourselves as individuals and see if that statement is true of us. Is there a depth to my walk with Jesus or is it just something that I say I am?
Let me go back to what brought this whole thought process on for me. For the past several years around the month of September I begin to pray for the next year. I ask the Lord to impress upon my heart what He would have for me and my family and for the church that I pastor. Each year as I am praying, He gives me a word that just keeps bouncing around in my head and will not go away. One year the word was “vision”, so for the next year we focused on the portion of scripture that says “where there is no vision the people perish.” The next year the word “intentional” kept coming to the forefront, so, we focused on being intentional about our walk with Him in our daily lives, kind of like when Daniel “purposed in his heart not to defile his body”. Hopefully you see a pattern in this.
In September 2009 during prayer some verses in Colossians chapter one kept jumping out at me. These verses are the prayer that the Apostle Paul prayed for the people of Colosse. I just love Paul’s writing because you can just hear his love and compassion for the people he is writing to. The prayer says that he wanted them to “be filled with the knowledge of His will” and that they would “walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God”. After reading these verses and letting them affect me, the word “depth” is what I felt the Lord wanted me to focus on for this year. Paul was praying that the Colossian people would have some depth to them and not just the title of Christ follower. And that rang true with my heart for the people at Central.
So this year I am focusing on the words “Deep Simplicity”. I am going to keep it simple. I believe that sometimes we make following Him to hard. And we just get discouraged and quit. I don’t think that is how God wants it. So, I am praying the same prayer that Paul prayed in Colossians, that we would be filled with the knowledge of His will. And to accomplish this we can follow what the book of James says “if we draw near to God, He will draw near to us” (my paraphrase), now isn’t that simple. And then that we would walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him. This too is quite simple, according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians he writes, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fufill the lust of the flesh.” Sounds like an easy way to please Him.
I know I am not the best writer in the world, but if you are reading this, I hope some how, some way that I have at least gotten you to stop and think about the depth of your walk with Jesus. Don’t make it so hard. Draw Near to Him and Walk in the Spirit. If you don’t go to church, please find one that will challenge you to know His will and walk worthy of His calling upon your life. If you do have a church that you call home, GO and bless others with the gifts that God has given you and from the blessings He has given you.
Please know that God loves you more than you could ever know, and He desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Now that is pretty simple and yet deep, Hallelujah!