Whenever I go to the shoe store, a part of me is always attracted to new bright white shoes. I mean, they look so good on the rack at the store. Every now and then I give into the urge to buy them in spite of the reservations. The first week or so that I wear those new white shoes I am extremely careful about where I walk. If there is a muddy puddle in the middle of the sidewalk, I'll make sure to go around. For about the first week, I do everything I possibly can to keep those new shoes sparkling white. After a week, though, something happens. I begin to forget about my new shoes. The novelty wears off. Once this happens, I go bounding through puddles or wear my white shoes to hike muddy trails. Having got them dirty, now I stop trying to keep them clean.
Something analogous to this happens with our Christian life. When we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, God cleans us up and dresses us in white. As a new Christian, we are mindful to care for this new life. For a time, we make intentional decisions to live a life of obedience, love, godliness, and purity. However, once enough time goes by the novelty wears off and the initial fervor for Christ begins to wane. We forget the amazing gift we have been given by God, and we forget the commitment we've made to God. Having forgotten these things, it is easy for us to drift into complacency, apathy, indifference, and ritual. This is a rather common problem for people of faith. We get off to a good start in our Christian journey, but over time our love grows cold (see the letters to the seven churches in Revelation for examples). In a sense, we forget we are wearing white shoes, and we forget to make intentional efforts to stay clean.
Peter has a solution to this problem. As long as he has life and breath, Peter is going to keep reminding us of something. He is going to keep reminding us that we are wearing white shoes-- that God has redeemed us, cleansed us, and commanded us to walk in obedience to Him. Even though we already know these things, Peter is going to keep repeating this story over and over until it finally sticks in our heads. See, we have a memory problem. We quickly forget all the things God has done in our lives, and we quickly forget the vows we've made to God in the past. Since this is such a common problem in the Christian life, we should be doing everything we possibly can to improve our memory.
How can we improve our memory? I thought of a couple suggestions, but this is not meant to be a totally exhaustive list. For starters, we have to constantly be reading and meditating on the Word of God. The Scriptures are what remind us of these spiritual truths that we so easily forget during the daily grind of life. We have to refresh our memory on a daily basis by spending time in the Word. Secondly, we need time each day to commune with God through prayer. If we are not spending any time in fellowship with God, it will be easy to forget our Christian duties and obligations. Finally, we need to regularly gather in Christian community. The Christian life is not a solo journey. We are meant to be in the struggle together. We are meant to help one another keep our white shoes clean. Since this is the case, we should make it a priority to meet with fellow believers as often as we can. If do these three things, I think we will find that our memory problem starts to go away.
0 comments:
Post a Comment