catatonic

“There’s nothing worse than catatonic Christians standing still in a world of falling people.”

In life with God, there are at least three directions to it all….. There’s the upward component–a personal relationship with God.

That God would die so we can live, means that it should be impossible to understand this without feeling it’s truth. The Christian faith cannot be sectioned out as only academic. It must breath; it must live. Evangelicalism prizes this. It’s about honouring what the Puritans used to call “vital religion.” Soul-beats. a pursuit-of-Jesus: living-faith.

There’s also the inward component of Christianity–classically called spiritual disciplines. Writers like Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, and Henri Nouwen have consistently expressed the importance of living a spiritually disciplined life. St John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and others show us how to develop our interior life. Jesus spent nights alone in prayer with his Father, and the Holy Spirits urges all believers that intimacy with God must be nourished and maintained. The patient groove of daily disciplines help us live intentional lives. They refine us and reform us. They create within us a hunger that can be satisfied only by God.

And there’s also an outward component to Christianity. Being Christ to the world. Living in sacred community and reaching out to others.

Catatonic Christianity is when Christians see a need and do not respond. It’s a problem that’s too present! Christ’s command remains–to be the light of God in a dark and dying world, and it’s catatonic when we don’t!

Each one of the three components of the Christian faith–the upward, inward, and outward–feeds off and strengthens the other.  They interact and affect the other. And together they contribute to a Christianity that is as relevant as it is real and rooted.

Perhaps it’s like David said: lets ‘not give to God that which costs us nothing.’ 2 Samuel 24v24

Costly,…. of consequence: never catatonic!