We are supposed to rotate our tires every 7,500 miles. Check your owner's manual to make sure. For me that would be about every two and a half months. I absolutely fail at tire rotation.
My wife takes better care of the tires on her car than I do on mine. She has somebody rotate her tires for her. The tire place does it . . . for free - part of her buying he tires there I guess. Me? I like to rotate my own tires. It's kind of a guy thing I guess. I feel like I am accomplishing something, all by myself.
There seems to be fewer and fewer things like that we can do all by ourselves these days. We have to have an app. We have become so dependent on others or on our technology, that we often can't remember how to do things.
This past month I have had a few people come up to me and tell me it's time to replace my tires. They are right. I need to replace them badly. Yet I procrastinate. Why? I'm too busy . . . probably. Or at least that's what I tell myself. It's more like I'd rather be doing something else. How like us humans . . . especially when it comes to our faith.
For most of my life there was always "something else" I would rather be doing than to go to church. Boring! I'd just sit there twiddling my thumbs while some old guy told us about God. Not fun.
I was an idiot.
Church is not supposed to be fun. We should be in church to worship. I never understood that until I was in my 50's. I never understood the concept of actually worshiping God. Lots of people don't. My church is filled with people like that. So is yours. And guess what. I am still one of them!
Listening to a message on Sunday mornings is not worship. Singing songs is. Praying is. Communion is an act of worship. So is baptism. Even the offering is worship.
Some churches try to make their worship services entertaining. Those churches are foolish. Some churches try to make their services "inviting" so that everyone feels "welcome." That's wrong. Not that people shouldn't feel welcome, it's just that worship is NOT for non-believers. People will feel welcome if the church is filled with actual believers. Unless, of course, not everyone is an actual believer.
I heard of a pastor in Texas who periodically gives "pew-clearing messages." He'll give a few fire and brimstone messages every once in a while to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. That's a good thing. Just like a gardener pruning his plants, it makes for a healthier church overall.
What does all this have to do with tires? If we look at our faith lives as a set of tires we can begin to see a parallels. When our faith becomes commonplace it's like our tires getting worn . They lose their grip and so does Jesus' place in our lives. That's dangerous. There is nothing more valuable in a heavy rainstorm of during a winter blizzard than a good set of tires. A fresh set of tires really grips the road. Worn tires are no good to anyone. Neither is a weak faith.
So how do we make our faith stronger and our worship more worship-FULL. We need to change. We need to change our reading habits. Spend time reading the Bible and applying it to our lives. We need to spend more time LIVING our faith. What good is one's faith if they don't use it for God's glory!
The only way we can navigate the storms and the winding roadways in our faith is to have good traction. We get that from God. We read, we pray, we worship and we love others.
We must examine our faith lives just like we keep track of our tires. You never know when we might find a leak or a weak spot and we certainly never want our faith to go flat! Check your faith today. A little under-inflated perhaps? Spend time with God.
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." - Romans 12:1-2
The Critical Elements of True Worship - John MacArthur
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