Forgetting and Mingling

Today’s Reading:

• Psalms 105-106

Faith-Stretching Verse(s):

• They forgot God, their savior, who had done such great things in Egypt. – Psalm 106:21, NLT

• Instead, they mingled among the pagans and adopted their evil customs. – Psalm 106:35, NLT

Thoughts: Losing your walk with Jesus is as easy as forgetting and mingling.

Why do people lose their faith in Jesus? Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy to do. All you need are two common life skills: forgetting and mingling.

Forgetting is when you stop thinking about your history with Jesus. You stop remembering what He did for you. You stop realizing how much He is doing for you. You put your mind on other things, and you downplay His role in your life. Amazingly, the Israelites were able to forget about God’s wonders and how He had miraculously brought them out of Egypt even while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from God! And having forgotten Him, they replaced Him with a golden calf. We are amazingly adept at forgetting.

And forgetting is even more easy when we’re mingling. Mingling is simply getting into a community. Different communities have different ways of thinking and talking about the world. So if we’re from one community, but then we mingle with another community, it creates a conflict inside of us wherever the communities differ from one another. Something inside of us yearns to be fully accepted by the people we’re mingling with. And this yearning makes us try to conform to each community’s standards for acceptance. Mingling with a new community that doesn’t think the same way as our original community—whether this involves a farmer moving to the city, a smoker living among non-smokers, a northerner living in the south or a Christian befriending unbelievers—encourages us to forget our old patterns and adopt new ways of talking and behaving so that we can adapt and fit in to new surroundings less conspicuously.

And voila! Life transformation occurs! Unless a person figures out what it will look like to hold on to his or her original pattern while still living in a new community (or rejects the new community entirely), forgetting and mingling result in adapting. The farm boy sets aside farm life and replaces it with city life. The smoker tries to quit smoking until he either gives up, leaves his new home or (possibly) succeeds. The northerner learns to interpret the southern drawl and to say, “Yes, sir,” and, “No, ma’am.” And the Christian adopts the unbelievers’ lifestyles and thoughts and ways of talking about reality.

Adaptation is natural. It can feel necessary. In some cases, for survival, it is necessary. So the question of whether to adapt or not depends on convictions. In most cases, people have no convictions against adapting. Moving from the farm to the city? Sure, learn to live the city life. Moving in with non-smokers? Sure, try to quit smoking. Moving south? Sure, adapt to the drawl. But matters of faith and morality are matters of conviction. To hold on to our original faith while mingling with a new community requires a conviction that keeps us remembering, rather than forgetting. And the very convictions required for remembering are the convictions that seem to melt away the more we mingle.

Living among people who oppose our convictions can be extremely internally challenging. Living with people always involves some degree of mingling with them. Disagreements will become obvious soon enough. If a believer wants to maintain his faith, there’s going to be a cost. Mingling will always have to stop short of agreeing with words or behaving in ways that deny his convictions. Forgetting will have to be fought by disciplined self-reminders and, if possible, by plugging into a community of people who share the same convictions and care about remembering them together.

We all face the challenge to forget, mingle and adapt to people around us. How does this play out in your life? Are you forgetting, mingling and adapting? Or are you remembering, limiting mingling with convictions and staying faithful?

For an overview of this year’s blog, please see http://threequartertank.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-do-believers-believe.html.

Faith-Based Risks

Today’s Reading:

• Genesis 21:8-23:20
• Genesis 11:32
• Genesis 24:1-67

Faith-Stretching Verse(s):

• So Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food and a container of water, and strapped them on Hagar’s shoulders. Then he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba. – Genesis 21:14, NLT

Thoughts:
How on earth could Abraham send his firstborn son away?

I don’t think Abraham could have done it without his faith in God—the same faith that enabled him to be willing to sacrifice his promised son, Isaac, a little while later.

Both events sound awful. We’re used to thinking about how terrible it would be for God to ask us to sacrifice a son because we hear the story of Isaac all the time. But it’s not as if being asked to send a son out into wilderness and never to see him again would be much easier. How could Abraham do it?

Here’s how: Abraham could only send his son Ishmael away if he was 100% convinced that God would truly care for his boy.

Abraham sent Ishmael away knowing he would survive…at least, if God was real and trustworthy. Just before sending Ishmael away, Abraham at least thought that he heard this message from God: “But I will also make a nation of the descendants of Hagar’s son because he is your son, too.” So Abraham acted in line with the promise he heard from God. And do you know what? Ishmael survived. And although not all Arabs are necessarily descended directly from him (at least, according to http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/OnlineDiscipleship/UnderstandingIslam/Is_the_Arab_nation_descended_from_Ishmael.aspx; and please note that I do not necessarily endorse the sites on which I find things like this), their culture is considered to be his legacy. So there’s at least some evidence that God fulfilled His promises yet again.

But the point I really want to make is this: the steps Abraham took were the steps of a man convinced that He was hearing from God. And things worked out the way Abraham trusted that they would.

So another reason I believe is that men like Abraham, throughout the Bible and throughout extra-biblical history, have been willing to risk everything on God’s promises. People don’t take such big risks without being completely convinced that someone has their back. When that Someone is God, and when He comes through like this, their conviction seems to be validated. And trusting their God seems reasonable.

For an overview of this year’s blog, please see http://threequartertank.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-do-believers-believe.html.