Mindful

Ezekiel 36:²⁶ “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.”

Let’s start with a quick recap. Familiarity is the first trap of growth that keeps people where they are despite all the power available to them. The first thing that causes familiarity is Hearing Without Responding. You have to respond to the Word of God. Remember that it is a double-edged sword. This means that when you begin to respond to the Word, your heart opens up to being ploughed, and that hardened pathway becomes fertile soil over time. As you respond to the Word of God, your heart becomes more responsive to the Word of God. Your heart becomes softer, sensitive, and fruitful. So, every Word spoken into your life becomes fruitful and so shall it be in Jesus Name.

The second thing is Acting Without Thinking. In many relationships, people just act without thinking. They would have acted before they started thinking. Every time you act without thinking, firstly it is because of familiarity; secondly, it breeds familiarity, thirdly it strengthens familiarity. So, you need to think before you act. Acting without thinking is what strengthens traditions. “This is how we have always done it.” When I first started pastoring, I looked at the systems that had been handed over to me, and I did a mental system audit. For example, why do we subject people to three months of baptismal classes? When eighty percent of them will drop out; the remaining twenty percent will struggle to survive it, and eighty percent of that twenty percent are not even listening. Why do we subject people to that?

Why don’t we just baptize people as they get saved or as baptism becomes available? So, we started to baptize people as they got saved. And I almost got into trouble with that. They said, “Ah! We don’t do it like that!” and I said, “Why don’t we do it like that?” Traditions—it is just how we have been doing it. You have to do it how we have been doing it, so that it can be how it has always been. And that is why we are getting the results we are getting. But some of us are dissatisfied with the status quo and that is what strengthens religion – acting without thinking.

I know some of you are thinking that this does not really apply to me, I am quite dynamic. I don’t act without thinking, I think before I act. As a Pastor, one thing I noticed is that all other things being equal, when people get to church early and there is no usher in their way, most people will sit in the exact same chair. In fact, some people get upset when someone else gets there before them. We do this because we have become familiar, so we act without thinking.

Prayer: Father, give me a new heart—a tender and responsive heart, in Jesus Name. Amen!