Daily Jewel

by Pastor Carnell, McAlester, OK
March 29, 2012

“Fending Off Attacks!” (Apathy)
“Above all else, guard your heart….it is the wellspring of life.” – Proverbs 4:23

Apathy: “Lack of interest or concern; especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal…indifference. Lack of emotion…impassive.”
It has been said that too many Americans have been inoculated with a slight case of Christianity that is preventing them from getting the real thing. Perhaps this has something to do with how much of God people really want. Here is a quote from Wilbur Rees to make you think:,br /> "I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please - not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of him to make me love a foreigner or pick beets with a migrant worker. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of a womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I'd like to buy $3 worth of God, please.",br /> I especially like the line 'I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth'. This, I am afraid, is exactly what people want out of their worship and church experiences. Not something that demands them to pick up a cross, make major sacrifices and follow Jesus. Rather, they want something that makes them comfortable with who they already are and not what Christ could lead them to be. They want acceptance as they are, not repentance so they can be who they ought to be.
In one way…apathy is not taking responsibility for our relationship with God. We take for granted that it is just there and do nothing with it or for it. What happens then when a need arises or storms come—would we be ready?
When we lived in the Ft. Worth area, Carswell Air Force base was our neighbor. The base had closed about three years before we moved there—but what was the most disturbing to me was that the housing units that had been used for the soldiers was allowed to sit unoccupied and most of them were boarded up and wasting away. Rotting and falling apart. If the base were to reopen it would cost thousands of dollars to repair those homes, if they could be repaired at all. That, to me, is what apathy does to us Spiritually—we do not allow the Holy Spirit to build His home within us and what God accomplished through the death and resurrection of His Son loses its power! An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife, enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by.,br /> The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials.
It was an unfortunate way to end his career. When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, he handed the front-door key back to the carpenter. "This is your house," he said, "my gift to you."
What a shock! What a shame! If the carpenter had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had built none too well. So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than our best. At important points we do not give the job our best effort. Then with a shock we look at the situation we have created and find that we are now living in the house we have built. If we had realized that, we would have done it differently.
Don’t allow apathy to rot the home Christ wants to build within us.