This Sunday people all around the country and around the world will flock to their local churches.
\nSome will be members, some will be visitors, some will simply be curious about this man they call Jesus Christ.
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a new phenomenon.
\nPeople always have a tendency to flock to church on Easter and Christmas Sundays.
\nBut why? Why do these two days deserve recognition over others?
\nYes, I know the history.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not doubting the importance of Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birth and Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s resurrection.
\nAfter all, without these two crucial events, my entire faith would be void.
\nSo, the events they celebrate are very important. But what about next Sunday, or the Sunday after that?
\nWhy do they not deserve the extra time and effort it takes to wake up and get dressed on Sunday mornings?
\nIs it because we know on Easter and Christmas the pastor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message will be a little more fine tuned?
\nIs it because we know the choir and musicians will have practiced a little more during the week for the big service?
\nOr is it because we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve turned God and our worship of God into something it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be?
\nLike usual, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go with the later suggestion.
\nNow I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not just purposely stepping on the toes of those who only attend church once or twice a year, or even once a month.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve need to remove the plank in my eye before I even attempt to remove the speck in yours.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve managed to turn God into a light switch that I can turn on and off whenever I want.
\nFinances getting tight? Turn on the supernatural God switch and watch miracles work.
\nFamily member sick? Turn on the miraculous God switch and watch people healed of their disease.
\nWant to watch the latest movie that everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about? Turn off the amazing God switch and watch my conscious disappear.
\nWant to flip off that driver that just cut you off? Turn off the forgiving God switch and swear away.
\nIt sometimes becomes habitual. Turn the God switch on and Sundays and turn it off as soon as you walk out the doors.
\nAfter all, growing up, my dad always taught me to save electricity and turn off the lights whenever I walked out of a room.
\nI don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to wear God out and force Him to work overtime, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just give Him Monday through Saturday off.
\nHe can make everyone else feel guilty when they mess up.
\nSo we turn off the God switch and forget about Him.
\nBut I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that just like a light switch, He still remains ready to provide His power when we ask.
\nHe was ready and waiting before we even knew of Him and His power.
\nThe Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Long 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nDoes that not excite you?
\nGod provided everything we could possibly need and then let us in on His plans.
\nBut we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still rather ignore all of that so we can have freedom to do what we want without a guilty conscious.
\nI have several friends, who because of our busy schedules, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to get together and hang out. Yet when they call I can almost guarantee one thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they want probably want something.
\nProbably 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.
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I mind helping my friends, after all that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what friends are for, but their friendship means so much more when they call just to see how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing or call to grab a coffee, see a baseball game or call to go enjoy a triple scoop Rocky Road ice cream cone.
\nAnd I think that God feels the same.
\nPaul continues in chapter two, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nDon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let the world tell you how to live. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all done it, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make it OK.
\nDon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let them convince you to turn your light switch off.
\nIn 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a new phenomenon. People always have a tendency to flock to church on Easter and Christmas … Continue reading When Did God Become a Light Switch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2090],"tags":[2088,2089,2092],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns-reflections","tag-belton-journal","tag-columns","tag-newspaper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}