Speed-Dating with God

It was a weekend of watershed events.
What a joy it was to attend my daughter Ami’s graduation from Wichita Falls High School this past Saturday. I was so pleased to celebrate with a wonderfully relaxing supper with Ami following the ceremonies – on a Saturday night! Pardon a little fatherly bragging: Ami worked hard to reach 20th in her graduating class. As many of you know, she’ll be attending TCU in the fall, majoring in music education.
Sunday morning, we attended worship at Park Place Christian Church, the first congregation in which I served as Senior Pastor. Memorial Day weekend meant that there were a lot of empty seats, but I was still delighted to reconnect with many familiar faces. It was interesting to participate in a worship service fifteen minutes longer than ours at First Christian Church Rockwall. Needless to say, it felt quite relaxed, even slow at times. Perhaps it was the fact that I am still struggling to relax combined with the fact that Wichita Falls represents an easier slower pace than our Dallas suburb. I am so used to keeping our worship service moving at a steady pace. I told friends and family that the longer worship at Park Place made our worship service feel like “speed-dating” with God.
As I pondered this idea of speed-dating with God, it occurred to me that we can have this attitude no matter how long a worship service is. We do it regularly, quickly assessing how God fits with our life while in the next chairs sit our work, our family, our recreation, our belongings, our obsessions, our gripes, etc. It’s not about the quantity of time we give to God; it’s about the commitment we are ready to give to God. Are we prepared to make our relationship with God more than merely a chair we sit in for a while once a week? And while we are there in that seat, are we prepared to really to get to know God and seriously examine just how this relationship can impact our lives? Do we have this idea that we can move on and graduate from a committed life with God?
All those thoughts out of just 15 minutes longer in worship…