Welcome back, I’ve had to take a few weeks off writing due to exhaustion.
I want us to think about something we maybe don’t consider a great deal.
It’s easy to think of God as the creator of the universe, the all-seeing and all-knowing teacher and judge of our behaviour, or the loving deity who allowed his precious son to die for us to be able to receive eternal life.
Do you ever think about him as a parent in another way?
We’ve all had very different experiences with our parents. Maybe yours were always actively engaged and interested in your life. In the things you did for fun. In the friends you chose to spend time with. In the decisions you made about your future. Maybe they still are.
Or maybe they weren’t.
Or maybe it wasn’t until later in life you realised just how much they actually cared, even if you couldn’t recognise it at the time.
Do you ever think about God in those terms?
Do you imagine that he’s interested in the day-to-day aspects of your life? The things you do for fun? The people you do them with? The small decisions you make about what to wear or what to eat or where to go on holiday?
Or do you seem him as only being interested in the big decisions – which job to take, who to marry, where to live?
Or the decisions that have some spiritual import – whether to be baptised, what roles to take at church, what opinions you reach on major political or religious issues?
Or how you react in moments of crisis and emergency – health problems, losing a loved one, financial trouble?
Is God essentially indifferent to the little things? As long as you don’t make a mistake or commit a sin, does he really care about the day to day happenings of your life? After all, there are over 7 billion other people on earth, many of whom will have much more interesting lives than yours or mine.
Who is a parent most interested in?
Their own child or somebody else’s?
For the vast majority it’s going to be their own child. It doesn’t matter how exciting or dull or important their child’s life might seem compared to someone else’s. It’s THEIR OWN child.
Do you think God is any different? If you are his child then isn’t he likely to be much more interested in your life than in someone who has chosen not to be one of his children?
And if you are a parent, are you only interested in your child’s life when they need to make a big decision or do something thrilling? Or when they face disaster and need your help?
Aren’t you interested in everything that’s going on, particularly when they are young?
Again, do you think God is any different?
The danger of thinking that God isn’t really interested in the day-to-day banalities – such as what you eat, what you wear, your journey to work, the small things you spend money on – is that it becomes very easy to do these things and make these decisions without factoring God into them at all.
It means that prayer can become something entirely perfunctory – a ritual at set times of the day – and your only REAL conversations with God come when you’re facing an emergency or you have a significant life decision to make.
Your faith, your priorities in life, your relationship with God – these things are not shaped only by how you act during moments of disaster or moments when your life changes for better or worse. They’re also shaped by the little things you do and the little decisions you make every day.
Is God interested in the little moments?
Of course.
Do you involve him in them? That’s a question only you can answer.
Here’s two short passages for you to think about:
Luke 12:6-7: “[Jesus said] …are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
In this context, Jesus was teaching the people not to fear what might happen to them at the hands of human authorities. Instead, remember that God has power not only over what happens to you in this life, but in the next one. And he cares about you. He loves you. He remembers even the birds in the air.
Every hair on your head – and by extension every minute of your day, no matter how unimportant they may seem – is important to him as well. Every minute of your day should be lived with this in mind: God is interested in what you’re doing, and everything you do, say or think will shape whether you’re welcomed into that life to come.
2 Corinthians 10:5: “[Paul wrote] …we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ“
This is in the context of Paul comparing his job as a church teacher to that of a soldier. Instead of carrying a sword and going into battle against physical opponents, Paul’s battle was against philosophies and opinions which people had brought into the church and which were NOT compatible with the truth taught by God. Paul’s objective was not to destroy these people but to “capture” their minds (like prisoners of war) and bring them back to Jesus in order to learn the truth.
Notice that he wasn’t interested only in the “big” thoughts or important life decisions these people had made. “Every thought” needed to be reframed into something that agreed with the truth revealed by God.
In the context of your life or mine, we might not have a church leader like Paul to do this on our behalf. For you, it may be your OWN responsibility to ensure that EVERY thought which strays away from God’s truth is “captured” and brought back into line. Not just the big thoughts, not just the important moments, not just the crises…EVERY THOUGHT.
Because every thought, every word, every decision…they make up who you are a person.
What kind of person do you want to be? Because God is VERY interested in the answer…
Nihilist to Christian 