all dressed up, now what!

So i took my daughter out for daddy-date-day this week. I learned about date-days from the Sr. Pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle...the whole philosophy is that if dad's take their daughters out for dates when they're young, they'll have a standard for how Godly men should treat them. We have a blast. We get up, eat, get dressed and figure out where we should go. We hit parks on sleds, long slow trips through the grocery store where we pick up and move everything, bookstores...

This past week we had a mission to get her hair cut. My wife and I don't dare do it so we take her to this place that's like Chuckie Cheeses, only you get to play with scissors. It's a good drive from our house so i brought along some gifts cards that were given to her so we could pick up a few things for her to wear. When i stopped my truck she was little-miss-sleepy-girl snoozing away so i scooped her up and shopped while she snored. She popped up just in time to give the checkout girl my credit card (foreshadowing?), get some stickers and grab her bag and walk out of the store looking like a buyer for Saks. It was like she was a sea turtle, i mean, she didn't have to be taught to throw her bag over her shoulder and strut...she woke up from a snoozing stupor and slid into the job.

...have you ever met a follower of Christ who has done the same? i mean, as soon as they wake up from their stupor and enter into the radiance of Jesus, they just flow? Most of you haven't i would guess, and i'd lay money that it's not because the person didn't exhibit a natural desire to put on the new clothes they were given by Jesus. When the Holy Spirit begins the process of sanctification it is decisive and immediate. The dead are alive, the old is new.

What happens most often is that when sleepers awake, those that thought they were the "spiritual alarm clock" try and make them fit into thier idea of what a buyer for Saks should look like...and most often it's themselves....so when these new lives that have been redeemed by God start off to tell of the wonderful things God has done, they get told to wait and clean up first...

This was not the case when Jesus woke them up, as with Peter's mom when she was sick (Mark 1:29ff). As soon as the fever left her, she got up and began to serve...just like that.

I guess I'm a little sensitive in this area as i've been blessed to see many people wake from their sleep and then head off to a church only to be told to calm down, clean up, look like us. Now I know that we are called to live a life inline with the Spirit of God and at least not resist transformation, but i've seen too many people get pumped for Jesus, run to the church...and then run away....why is that?

Here's your challenge. Look around your church next time you are there. What do they look like, how do they serve God, how did they come to faith?

wake up sleepers, the Lord wants to send you redeemed shoppers...are you ready?