I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my years of walking with the Lord that I have simply gone through the motions. There have been times that I have put my spiritual walk on “auto pilot” instead of actively seeking out what God desired for me to be doing and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and to guide. It was in these times that my walk was more of a ritualistic thing rather than a heart thing. In these times it became a walk of obligation and routine rather than a walk of love and joy. Please don’t get me wrong here, there is a place for routine. It truly is a beautiful thing for us to be so deeply disciplined in our walks with the Lord that our daily time spent with the Him is very routine. But when it becomes just that, routine and nothing more, when it gets to the point of just putting the check in the box of Bible reading and prayer for the day, then we need to be very cautions. When our routine turns into obligation, or the check in the box mentality, then complacency can start to set in, and when this happens, this is a gateway for discontentment to enter. As these things start to enter into our walks, they will slowly drive a wedge between us and the Lord. Jesus Himself warns us of the effects when the routines and rituals of men are not kept in check by us keeping our eyes and heart turned toward the Father.
Jesus’ Thoughts About Rituals
“He replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” Mark 7:6-8
Jesus was addressing the Pharacies here, but I truly believe that we can apply this directly to our lives as well. Besides, we are no less sinners than the Pharacies were. Jesus reminds us that we can get so caught up in routine and traditions that we miss what is really going on. He sternly corrected the Pharacies on numerous occasions because they stuck so wholeheartedly to the traditions and rituals of men that they refused to change their hearts. Yes, it is completely possible for us to become so comfortable in our place of routine that we refuse Christ when He is desiring a change to occur in our hearts and lives. And just like the Pharacies we can easily replace God with our rituals, traditions and routines. This should come as no surprise, but this is actually quite an easy trap to fall into. We should not allow ourselves to get so comfortable in our routines that we refuse to change when the Lord is convicting our hearts to do so. As I stated earlier, I am in no way trying to bash routine. I think it is very important that we all have routine in our walks with the Lord, but when we rely so heavily on routine and not on the leading of the Holy Spirit we can miss some of these very precious workings of the Lord in our hearts. Our routines should never trump the spontaneous leading of the Holy Spirit! Our routines should be flexible enough to always allow room for the Lord to take us in a total different direction if he desires to do so. Flexibility and teachability are two key things the Pharacies lacked. They refused to change when change was so desperately needed. They hardened their hearts to some of the most precious workings that the Lord ever will offer anyone in their lifetime, the workings of Jesus Christ!
God likes spending time with us each and every day. He wants that time to be a treasured and precious time, a time set aside for Him to do some amazing things in our lives. It takes work to keep ourselves from flipping the switch to “autopilot.” Let’s face it, it is much easier to read a quick couple of verses and say a quick little prayer then it is to truly sit at the Lord’s feet to have some deep meaningful fellowship with Him. Sometimes it requires us to clear our schedules so that we have no other pressing matters to draw us away from doing just that! Now, I realize that we can not necessarily clear our schedules everyday so we can spend countless hours with the Lord, but we do need to make a conscious effort to make our time with Him to be just Him and Him alone, with no distractions. When we make the Lord our priority, He will be sure to make our hearts a priority. Our Lord is looking for a rich meaningful relationship with us, not just a check in the box for each day. Let’s work hard to stay out of a ritualistic place and stay in a place of deep companionship with the Lord each and every day!
Lord, I thank you for showing us in your word that we can easily fall into a place of routine and rituals and walk away from your desire to speak into our lives. You do not desire for us to stay in the same place. You desire for us to change and grow in the things of you. I pray that you help us to use our routines to be consistent in reading your word, but help us not to fall into a place of thinking that this is enough. Lord, we need you to speak into our lives. Keep us from being in a place where serving you becomes a ritual, a place where we are serving you out of routine only. We don't want to be in a place where we serving out of obligation, but we want to find ourselves in a place where we are serving you out of the love and joy flowing from our inner most being!
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