Christians forgetting God
How could I forget about God? Did David forget God when he walked around the castle roof and saw a naked woman bathing? He could have looked away and fled from the roof, as Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife. Instead, David forgot about God and sent a servant to the woman.
Men in the Ministry: “Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
David was the great man of God: the man whom God refers to as the man after His own heart. How did he forget about God? Does forgetting God happen suddenly, or is it a process? David is a good example of the process of forgetting God. Start slowly with culturally acceptable practices. In the example of David, in Samuel 5 God records David’s initial assumption of power. He tells us that after leaving Hebron, David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem. In Deuteronomy 17, God sets the standards for the Hebrew kings. They are commanded to avoid three things: 1) acquiring many horses, 2) taking many wives, and 3) accumulating much silver and gold. David missed number two. Although it was culturally acceptable, it was a sin for the leaders.
Men in Ministry What are concubines allowed to corrupt your life?
In 1960 CS Lewis observed: “There are many people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen.”
We can slowly become numb to sin. This occurs when we create an environment in our life that opens the door to sin and the desire to forget God.
The door opens from television, the Internet, worldly music, radio, tabloids, books, magazines, and conversation, flirting in the office or church. Our list of concubines can be very long. The man who wants football, golf or baseball on TV or work or sleep more than time with God or his wife or family. Watching shows on TV that contain “adult content” opens a door for the concubine. We begin to forget about God. Perhaps we shudder at the thought. I don’t put these things before family or God.
CS Lewis believed that salvation was an ongoing process, not a one-time thing. Conversion is a great event, but one can choose to back off from cooperating with the Holy Spirit and therefore lose salvation. True believers can fall from grace.
The environment for a growing sanctified life is our responsibility to create and increase the space for God in our lives. But we can also create an environment that makes it easier for us to place things in front of God and family.
Living on the West Coast, it’s easy to see when the local teams play Sunday football on the East Coast. Games start around 9:30am PST. What happens to the men in the congregation? Not all men are attracted to this concubine. What happens to the families of men who choose a football game over fellowship, praise, worship, prayer and truth from the pulpit?
We are in the world but we are not of the world. We need to live in heaven on earth; with us God brings heaven to earth. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Men in the Ministry, forgetting about God is made very easy by all the acceptable sins in the world.
