The Daily Commute
Dear Friends,
Usually when I’m in the car driving to work, or running errands, I listen to news on the radio. It’s a habit I started a few years back, mostly because I needed to hear the traffic updates so I could avoid congestion and traffic issues while driving around town. However, what I’ve noticed recently is that listening to the news has become such a part of my daily routine that, all-too-often I don’t actually hear the traffic report. And that’s because my mind isn’t focused on what I’m hearing, because I’m just going through the motions of my daily routine.
Today however, I decided to switch things up, and as I drove across town, I tuned the radio to the local Christian music station. A song called “The Motions” was playing, and the chorus really caught my attention. It goes like this:
I don’t wanna go through the motions.
I don’t wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me.
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking
“What if I had given everything?”
instead of going through the motions.
As I listened to that song, God used those words to remind me that what happens in my daily routine of driving to work can also happen in my relationship with Him: I can easily just go through the motions. But God calls us to so much more than that in our relationship with Him. Jesus makes this very clear in Mark 12:30, when He challenges us to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” That’s not a call to “routine Christianity”. Instead, it’s a challenge to live with a passionate, fully committed, heartfelt faith.
So today, let’s not just go through the motions in our faith. Let’s not allow the daily routine of life to lull us into a complacent relationship with God. Instead, let’s be excited about our walk with Him. Let’s focus on God in a fresh new way, and allow His Holy Spirit to restore the joy of our salvation so that we can live as fully committed and passionate followers of Christ.
Amen?
Daniel