Revelations Through Ezekiel

A couple of months ago I became the leader of the young adult group at my local church. It wasn't really something that I expected to be leading, but instead something that I had planned on attending. However, the leadership that was doing it decided that it was too much for them to make the weekly commitment and the group would be disbanded if I did not step up and volunteer to take the position. I knew a couple that was currently not attending church or any kind of small group for growth. One of the couple was somewhat new to the faith and I knew that the group would be perfect for them, as I had enjoyed the time that I got to spend with other people my age. Thus, I saw the need for the group to continue.

I started the group by having a study on Dwight Robertson's book, You are God's Plan A. This seemed like the perfect fit for where everyone was in life. It went as well as any book study with a group of young adults goes. No one really had the book read so we struggled through the discussion. Not willing to try another book study yet, I moved to something different – the Bible. But, I couldn't get them to pick a book in the Bible to study. My goal for the group was not to have a teacher student relationship, but they kept turning to me to be a leader and pick a book. So I was at a loss.

However, then in one of our seminary assignments, I was struck by a couple of interesting verses in Ezekiel. I hadn't realized such interesting things were found in the book. On the other hand, I did remember a number of exceptionally awkward verses that would definitely lead to some rather unusual discussion. So I decided to lead the group through a study on Ezekiel . . . having no idea what was in store.

The first week went well as we had a blast observing the imagery used in Ezekiel's vision. Our first assignment was to draw our own rendition of the “creature” for the following week. This was a good time, but now we hit Ezekiel chapter 3, and we found our first bit of seriousness and profoundness. In particular we looked at the following verses:

Ezekiel’s Task as Watchman

16 At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to me: 17 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 18 When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for[b] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

20 “Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 21 But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

22 The hand of the LORD was on me there, and he said to me, “Get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.” 23 So I got up and went out to the plain. And the glory of the LORD was standing there, like the glory I had seen by the Kebar River, and I fell facedown.

24 Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said: “Go, shut yourself inside your house. 25 And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people. 26 I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, for they are a rebellious people. 27 But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says.’ Whoever will listen let them listen, and whoever will refuse let them refuse; for they are a rebellious people.

We all sort of fell silent and didn't really know how to handle some of these verses. We were all kind of focusing and reflecting on the idea that we had perhaps missed a number of opportunities to share God's message . . . and would now be held responsible. What it means in the end to be held accountable for not warning people about sin we did not know, but we did know it could not be a good thing.

God was sharing with us the importance to not miss opportunities to share the gospel. We cannot let things like fear and worry hold us back. It is our responsibility as Christians to share God's message and work His Great Commission – regardless of whether or not people accept it.

I was reminded on a man I once knew and spent a weekend with. A man from Illinois by the name of John Kiley. In my mind he is a living here of Ezekiel's responsibility. From the day that John Kiley was saved, he has never missed an opportunity to share the message of Christ with someone. Literally ever single person we interacted with over that weekend he shared something about God or Jesus with. This was anyone from the waitress at a waffle house, to the cop that we stopped to talk to, the lady at the McDonald's Drive thru, and the man asking us for bus fare. Even the ones who rejected his message he managed to hand a book to even if they only accepted it to get him to go away. He was so committed to the people that we talked to that we ate at the waffle house the next day just to see how the waitress was doing and if we could pray for her or do anything more for her. This man was absolutely crazy, and was in his mid 40's I think. Surely there could be no one that would be left accountable for him. However, sadly, I am not sure I could say the same about myself. I have not lived a life of such boldness and passion for Christ. This passage in Ezekiel serves as a reminder and inspiration as to how we should be living out walk with Christ.

So my challenge for you this time is to consider the opportunities that you have missed.  Did you have the chance to make them different? Were you afraid of rejection or persecution?  What holds us back from living a life like John Kiley?

Your friend, brother, and companion in Christ,
-Zach Haas

Christians get bogged down, tired, and unmotivated

Well, it is not hard to see that it has been quite a while since the last time that I wrote a post. There are a number of reasons for this. Partially I have been “busy”, or rather, spending my time doing things that take lots of time without realizing it. (A nice way to say I have been playing a lot of video games and have not been utilizing time in a more beneficial manner) Partially I have not known what to write about. And finally, I have just found a complete lack of motivation and will to do … well … anything. It is for this very reason that I write this post; I should have written it weeks ago in all reality.

I would be lying if I said I wrote this post in an appropriate time fashion, but the truth is, I started it a number of weeks ago and have been working on it ever since. Waiting (procrastinating) on this post has actually led to a number of things. First of all, I have oddly discovered that I am not the only one feeling this way. I can think of two others off the top of my head that have been feeling, down, or demotivated, or just plain complacent about life and God. This is interesting because some of the people feeling like this (myself included) were feeling nearly the opposite last summer. God was working in our lives and we could see it an feel it. So what happened in the course of three seasons that could cause such a change in attitude? What kinds of things would cause an attitude like this in the first place? I am not sure I can even guess at the answer, but in the following paragraphs I shall pose some speculation.

Before I start on what I think may be the problem in some of this area, I would like to mention a verse that I found while procrastinating this post, as well as a verse that I knew about that may also be related.

Revelation 3:15-16 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

I believe this is how God views us complacent Christians. We claim to have found the greatest joy given to mankind through Christ Jesus, yet we do nothing about it. Day after day we complain, we pity ourselves, we live a get up – do work – eat – sleep – repeat lifestyle. It quickly becomes easy to lose the flame of salvation, the vigor of forgiveness, and the passion of Jesus. This is a very serious problem, especially if you take the passage literally. God says that he would rather us be one or the other. Wait a second . . . better to be cold? God would rather us be not Christians at all than unmotivated, dead ones? Yikes! If you stop and think about it for a moment it makes sense.

When I was in high school I was on the cross country running team. I was very good at it and I didn't even have to try. The thing with cross country was that only the top 5 finishers mattered. Therefore, you could have as many people on the team as you wanted to without consequence. It didn't matter if you had the 10 worst runners at the meet, as long as you also had a solid top 5. We would accept anyone no matter how good they were. Many times we would have people that really didn't care about the sport, they just wanted to be on a team. God's team does not work like this at all. Instead God only wants the people that are good. He wants his team to look as good as it can be. Many times the kids that didn't care on my cross country team were jokers that made the rest of us look bad. This is exactly what lukewarm Christians are like. They make real impassioned Christians look bad or get a bad name.

Anyway, the second verse I want to share is Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This means anything. Homework, shopping, working, cleaning, cooking, playing, swimming, laughing, crying, are all parts of “whatever you do.” How is it that we are supposed to be doing everything for God no matter what that we still find time to be unmotivated and tired?

An age old cliché states “practice makes perfect.” How many of us live our daily lives without practice? This kids seem to have it down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfScu505a2o. Unlike cross country, I have to “practice God.” This is because there is a source working tirelessly against us and God. Everyday we forget to practice God's law we feed the demons in the world around us. You have heard that the Angels rejoice when a new believer accepts Christ, well I think the demons rejoice when we live a normal day. The more we forget the more we stop caring. We may never lose our salvation, we may never stop going to church, but at the same time we will never again light on fire and be useful to God. We become lukewarm water, useless for everything save a few science experiments. In this case, Satan is the evil scientist.

I think that the opposite can also be a cause for becoming unmotivated. Some people spend all their time filling themselves up. It sounds a little weird to think that you can grow fat on God. It is not that we should spend less time with God; it is that we should spend more time doing God's will. Sometimes we think we have a better idea of what God wants us to do that what He actually wants us to do. For example, we have all heard someone say “That's it, I am staying in my room forever, all I am going to do is read the Bible and pray.” This is not only foolish, it is selfish and a sin. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). I once read a story of a man, possibly a monk, possibly a saint, I cannot remember and I tried looking it up without success. The man decided that he was going to dedicate his life to God. So he lived on a mountain all alone, he had people bring him food. He did nothing but pray and meditate on scripture. At some point he realized what he was doing was wrong and began to serve the Lord appropriately. I think that there comes a point when we have the best intentions by filling ourselves up. We consume, consume, consume, God in every way. We go to camps, meetings, groups, events, and whatever else we can find, but we forget that once we are full we are full. All those things are good and should be done, however, eventually we need to serve. We need to go out and do Christ's Great Commission. A common trait associated with fat people is laziness. When we are fat on God we become selfish, always trying to find out how we can get more God. Ironically, our desire to consume more God can actually prevent us from getting there. We need to share what God is doing for us. (I realize some of those things I mentioned provide for sharing God's work, and that is good, but I don't think people always have it work like that.) It is good to fellowship and be surrounded by Christians, but only for a time. If we stay in the safe area too long never risking ourselves for God we become stagnant – lukewarm.

Believe it or not there is another opposite side. I don't really know how that is possible, but work with me. Some people are servants, slaves even, to God. This is GREAT! The world needs more people like you. These people are known as people pleasers, I am one as well I think, though not as much as some. Christians like this become empty and tired. They have the right heart for sure, and most the time the right attitude, they love serving and they love putting themselves out. The problem is, they often forget about themselves. This can eventually lead to a crash, and then being tired. It can also lead to being bogged down and too busy. We often forget ourselves when trying to serve others and God. This even happens to God's shepherds, Pastors. It is for this reason that pastors are given sabbaticals in order to rest and fill themselves back up. We are only human, and while God can give miracles that can allow us to go days without sleep, food, and water constantly serving, we need to remember these are miracles. Sometimes we need to stop, maybe not even for a whole day and just takes some time to be with God. It is kind of like a marriage (hey look, we are the Bride of Christ?). A married couple often gets so tied up with life and work and responsibilities they start to grow absent in their marriage. This is why it is often recommended that you never stop going on dates with your spouse. Time alone to stop and focus on one another and renew your good ol' puppy love days. We need to never stop dating God either. While he never leaves us, it is sometimes good to just stop and spend a time with Him where we are quiet, listening and feeding ourselves.

So I now look at myself. What is my problem? I think perhaps a little bit of everything, however, the practicing daily one is regrettably my biggest issue. Last summer I was writing a blog entry every day for a while. I can remember that being one of my biggest times of growth with God. It's because I would take time to reflect on Him and just let my thoughts come out. Interestingly enough, some of my favorite times this summer have been serving at my church. I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with my old youth group in what seems like any capacity I want. The biggest part of course leading the devotionals. It seems that I am having a lot of support from both my church family and the teens. I cannot afford to be an unmotivated Christian with such an opportunity at stake. This valley that I am in is seemingly a hard one to shake. I need to get back into practice, I need to feed myself, and I need to serve and follow God's plan.

I recently got some praise for my blogging, and that is a really cool thing to receive. Nothing is more filling than hearing someone say they have gotten something, or learned something from my mostly self reflections and thoughts. I am writing to myself (and God I suppose) just as much if not more than I am to other people. One of the things someone commented on in particular was the fact that I have ended a number of blog posts with a challenge. I started it thinking no one is going to really pay a whole lot of attention to it but I was pleasantly surprised. So here is one for this one. How are you feeling right now? Are you feeling bogged down, tired, or unmotivated with either life or God? Try to find the source and fix it. If you cannot pray about it, or talk to someone, and definitely stay practicing. Perhaps you are not feeling down and instead are feeling more on fire, then what is it that is making you feel that way? Are you doing things right? How can you keep the fire burning?

Your friend, brother, and companion in Christ,

-Zach Haas

PS: Here's to hoping for some more frequent updates . . . its good practice.