When Did God Become a Light Switch

This Sunday people all around the country and around the world will flock to their local churches.
Some will be members, some will be visitors, some will simply be curious about this man they call Jesus Christ.
It’s not a new phenomenon.
People always have a tendency to flock to church on Easter and Christmas Sundays.
But why? Why do these two days deserve recognition over others?
Yes, I know the history.
I’m not doubting the importance of Christ’s birth and Christ’s resurrection.
After all, without these two crucial events, my entire faith would be void.
So, the events they celebrate are very important. But what about next Sunday, or the Sunday after that?
Why do they not deserve the extra time and effort it takes to wake up and get dressed on Sunday mornings?
Is it because we know on Easter and Christmas the pastor’s message will be a little more fine tuned?
Is it because we know the choir and musicians will have practiced a little more during the week for the big service?
Or is it because we’ve turned God and our worship of God into something it shouldn’t be?
Like usual, I’ll go with the later suggestion.
Now I’m not just purposely stepping on the toes of those who only attend church once or twice a year, or even once a month.
I’ve need to remove the plank in my eye before I even attempt to remove the speck in yours.
I’ve managed to turn God into a light switch that I can turn on and off whenever I want.
Finances getting tight? Turn on the supernatural God switch and watch miracles work.
Family member sick? Turn on the miraculous God switch and watch people healed of their disease.
Want to watch the latest movie that everyone’s talking about? Turn off the amazing God switch and watch my conscious disappear.
Want to flip off that driver that just cut you off? Turn off the forgiving God switch and swear away.
It sometimes becomes habitual. Turn the God switch on and Sundays and turn it off as soon as you walk out the doors.
After all, growing up, my dad always taught me to save electricity and turn off the lights whenever I walked out of a room.
I don’t want to wear God out and force Him to work overtime, so I’ll just give Him Monday through Saturday off.
He can make everyone else feel guilty when they mess up.
So we turn off the God switch and forget about Him.
But I’m glad that just like a light switch, He still remains ready to provide His power when we ask.
He was ready and waiting before we even knew of Him and His power.
The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1, “Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by His love. Long, long ago He decided to adopt us into His family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure He took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, His blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people–free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans He took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.”
Does that not excite you?
God provided everything we could possibly need and then let us in on His plans.
But we’d still rather ignore all of that so we can have freedom to do what we want without a guilty conscious.
I have several friends, who because of our busy schedules, it’s difficult to get together and hang out. Yet when they call I can almost guarantee one thing – they want probably want something.
Probably like my parents could almost guarantee I wanted something whenever I would do extra chores or start being extra nice to them and my sisters.
It’s not that I mind helping my friends, after all that’s what friends are for, but their friendship means so much more when they call just to see how I’m doing or call to grab a coffee, see a baseball game or call to go enjoy a triple scoop Rocky Road ice cream cone.
And I think that God feels the same.
Paul continues in chapter two, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then He picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.”
Don’t let the world tell you how to live. We’ve all done it, but that doesn’t make it OK.
Don’t let them convince you to turn your light switch off.
In fact, during this Easter season, lets all remove that switch and hard-wire our connection to God and make sure that nothing else gets in and shorts the most important circuit of all.