Centering on God

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Spirituality is faith lived out. After we have repented and been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), but we are still tempted, still sin, and still live daily in a fallen world.

Life is full of Gethsemene moments where we are confronted with painful choices (Matt 26:39). Do we turn to God in our pain and give it over to him—centering our lives—or will we turn into our pain and sulk—de-centering our lives? Because our personalities and our culture are formed by our daily answers to this question, it is important that we focus on God even as our eternal destiny is secure. Christian joy is not just pie in the sky; it is also a life well-lived.

Role of Faith

It is helpful to view faith in terms of priorities. Citing Bruce Leafbald,⁠1 Giglio (2003, 117) defines true worship as “centering our mind’s attention and our heart’s affection on the Lord.” What do we really worship? Giglio (2003, 13) writes: “follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your loyalty … [that] is what you [really] worship.” As the First Commandment reads: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exod 20:3)

If God is truly the first priority in your life, your faith becomes the denominator against which all other activities in life are measured. Blamires (2005, 44) writes: “To think Christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to man’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen child of God.” In money terms, it’s like the gold standard of the nineteenth century—all prices were measured in terms of the amount of gold required to make a purchase. Or, following Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem cited earlier, God is the assumption taken from outside our closed world that offers stability to our lives (Smith 2001, 89). By contrast, if God is just one of many priorities, you are at risk of falling into idolatry.

Idolatry as a False Priority

The Bible pictures idols as graven images or statutes (Ps 115:3-8). But this statuesque view of idolatry is less helpful than to view idolatry as misplaced priorities. If something other than God is our first priority, then it is like trying to do business with counterfeit money—you may be able to fool a few people, but pretty soon it will catch up to you. Idols let us down hard when they invariably break, as discussed previously.

The spiritual wanderlust that America is experiencing today starts with misplaced priorities that creates a spiritual vacuum, which may be filled by many substitutes—syncretistic Christianity, alternative religions, and addictions, especially idolatry. But because we are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27), these idols cannot bring the peace that only faith in God can bring.

Beyond Spirituality

Before Saint Patrickin in the fourth century the Irish were thought to be spiritually unreachable. Patrick, as a teenager sixteen-year old, was kidnapped by Irish pirates and sold as a slave in Ireland. For six years he worked as a slave caring for his master’s cattle in the Irish wilderness, but later escaped and studied to become a priest in France. He returned to Ireland as Bishop and evangelized the Irish out of his love for them. Patrick’s evangelism was simple, he lived out his faith in front of the Irish and offered them hospitality. Patrick and his companions planted more than 700 churches. The Irish revival later broadened to reach a morbid-bound church in the rest of Europe (Hunter).

By grace, through faith, our salvation is secure. Focusing on the image of God in our daily lives helps to assure that our lives are full of joy, not missed opportunities. The God that loves us wants what’s best for us and wants us to share our joy with those around us. What joy could there be in heaven if on our arrival we discovered that our spouse and children, friends and neighbors are nowhere to be seen? We are blessed to be a blessing (Gen 12:1-3) even in difficult circumstances.

Reference

Blamires, Harry. 2005. The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think? (Orig Pub 1963) Vancouver: Regent College Publishing.

Giglio, Louis. 2003. The Air I Breathe. Colorado Springs: Multnomah Publishers.

Hunter, George G. III. 2000. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Smith, Houston. 2001. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. San Francisco: Harper.

Footnotes

1 Course entitled: “Introduction to Church Music,” Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1983 (Gigilio 2003, 140).

Centering on God
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
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Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
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