The Motions.

This was written by my cousin Kaleb who is a high school sophomore. Let me just tell you how amazing he is and how encouraging he is to me.  I love this kid to death!!

Enjoy!

"The worship leader tells everyone to stand cause church is about to start. The lights over us slowly dim as the lights over the stage start to become clearer. Drummer hits his sticks together 4 times and worship begins. Everything seems like an ordinary night at church until the guy next to me starts jumping and screaming out praise to God. It kind of caught me off guard but I just smiled and kept singing. As I keep singing I get a bump from my cousin and I can tell it has to do with the guy next to me. She isn't mocking him but rather acknowledging his enthusiasm just as I did. We both smile and continue in worship. After a few songs everyone sat down and announcements began. I started thinking about the guy next to me and how my first reaction to his enthusiasm was a sense of embarrassment for him.

A parable from the Bible quickly came to mind, it was from Matthew 13:1-23. I talks about how a farmer went out to plant his seed. Some seed fell into shallow ground, other fell into thorns, some on the path, and some fell on good soil. The seeds that did not fall onto the good soil eventually perished and only the seed on the good soil remained. Then God explains the parable in verses 19-23.

"When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

Then it hit me. The difference between me and the guy next to me was the he flat out got it. He heard the word of God, and wasn't ashamed one bit to show it. He realized that church isn’t about going with the flow and going through the motions, it’s about going beyond your comfort zone to praise the Creator of the Universe.

So now the announcements are over and eventually the pastor comes up and begins to preach his sermon. At one point he has everyone open their Bibles to the book of Isaiah. I didn't have a Bible with me so I just turned to the screen to read. As the pastor began reading from the passage I noticed the guy next to me still going through his Bible. I started thinking to myself, "this guy puts on this great show during worship of how he is madly in love with God, and yet he can't find the book of Isaiah?" And then God spoke to me again.

There will be a day when you rise up to heaven and stand before the almighty God for Judgment. When you do God will look at your life and judge to see if you are worthy of His Kingdom. When God looks at the life of the guy next to me, he is going to see that this man was not ashamed to proclaim his faith under any circumstance. When he looks at my life he isn’t going to say, "Well, you knew all the right verses and you went to church every week, and you knew every worship song so welcome to My Kingdom." No, he is going to say, "You might have known the right verses but you never put them into action, and you might have gone to church but you didn’t listen to one sermon, you knew every worship song but never meant a word you said."

I'm not saying I don't put verses into action or listen to the sermon or really worship God. I'm saying that God gave me a wake-up call to tell me that I shouldn’t be ashamed to proclaim something I know is true. And that I should be more concerned about the passage and not the time it takes to find it. Because church isn’t about going with the flow and going through the motions, it’s about going beyond your comfort zone to praise the Creator of the Universe."