|
David W. Reis
|
Friday, May 28, 2010
|
|
Portland, OR, USA
|
Hi John,
Wednesday's Fischtank is missing from this list. I received it in my email and thought it was quite good.
From: todayscatch@fischtank.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 4:12 AM
To: Reis, David
Subject: Catch Of The Day, Spiritual Vacuums, May 26, 2010
Catch of the Day
Spiritual Vacuums
by John Fischer
Everybody worships something or someone. Worship may be a new emphasis these days, but it is not new for human beings. We have been doing it since we were created. God did more than create us and tell us to worship him. He created us with a NEED for worship.
Blaise Pascal, the brilliant French physicist we looked at yesterday, is the one who is credited with the idea of a God-shaped vacuum in every human heart. That's because he studied the vacuum and noticed that whenever a vacuum exists something by nature has to rush in and fill it. It seemed to him the perfect picture of how God created us, as constantly pulling in something. Think of yourself as a human spiritual vacuum.
Now the thing about a vacuum is that it will pull in anything that is within its reach. Like me, you may have heard this concept before, and assumed its work was already accomplished in someone's life by becoming a Christian. God created us with a need for Him — a hole inside us that is in the shape of God so nothing else satisfies that need but Him, and once I respond to Christ, that hole is filled and I am spiritually satisfied. But this description doesn't go far enough. It doesn't show that we are continuing to need Him. God doesn't plug up the hole so we can go on and indulge in whatever we like since this foremost thing is taken care of. He has made us with an enduring need to keep filling ourselves up. In other words, we not only have a vacuum, we are vacuums — always on, always sucking up whatever is near the heart.
Whatever you put near the door of your heart is going to be sucked in. Think of the number of things cluttering our spiritual core simply because we have not kept God and his truths close to our hearts at all times. This is why Jesus said we couldn't serve God and anything else. In order to live the way we were meant to live, we need to keep God as the focus of our worship and nothing else — not pride, or money, or material things, or even people.
Think about what you have near your heart today, and make sure that God is there, because only He can satisfy.
|
|
