I was thinking the other day about Quincy Carter (For non-football fans, he is now a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback). He was recently cut from the team while in training camp. Supposedly, he had failed his third drug test. Unbelievable! Here is a guy living out the dream of so many young people and he blows it.
I was thinking today about how often we make decisions in desperate attempts to feel alive. For example:
Not long ago, I was on a flight that had a two hour layover in Las Vegas. There in the airport terminal, I watched men and women sitting at slot machines putting in coin after coin. You could almost sense in some of them the desperation to somehow end up a winner.
Think about the people who you know who have walked out on their children and spouses for someone else. So often, it seems to be a desperate attempt to feel alive again.
Perhaps what is most disturbing are Christian people enprisoned by a dull, lethargy. I’ve seen it for years. Sometimes it can been seen in the glassy eyed person who is just enduring assemblies. Sometimes it is seen in the person who long ago lost any sense of passion or fire for God and for his work on this earth. I’ve seen it in a person whose heart long ago became cold and indifferent. He/she just doesn’t feel anything deeply–that is, anything connected with God. Consequently, this person may have a head full of correct Biblical information and may even live a moral life, but not treasure God. Unfortunately, I don’t just know about this from years of observation. I have been there before.
This is a very dangerous condition. To be familiar with the holy God, the one who brought ancient worshipers to tremble before him or to break out in praise, and yet to feel nothing.
I believe that the only hope for Christians whose hearts are frozen and whose minds have become dull, is a work of God’s Spirit. It will take God himself to revive what is on life support. Only the Spirit of the living God (who by the way raised Jesus from the dead) can revive what is dying (or even dead) (Ezekiel 37:1ff.). The good news, however, is that there really is life to be experienced (John 10:10). We are not doomed to merely exist. There is hope.