Day 29 - Joel

Listen, I'm all for some tradition.  If you talk to me about college football, you'll find that I am an extreme traditionalist.  I like traditional uniforms, traditional rivalries, traditional offenses and traditional bowl games.  I also grew up in a traditional church and serve as a pastor in a pretty traditional  denomination.  Of course, Church of the Way is anything but traditional.  However, even rock-n-roll churches have traditions.   I mean, we still worship on Sundays, sit in rows and stand up to sing.  We still take Communion and pass an offering basket.  The problem with tradition is that we tend to end up thinking that it's what God wants most.  I think routine, ritual and tradition can be meaningful, but it's not what God desires most.  One of my favorite passages makes this clear in the book of Joel:

12 “Even now,” declares the Lord,



“return to me with all your heart,


with fasting and weeping and mourning.”


13 Rend your heart


and not your garments.


Return to the Lord your God,


for he is gracious and compassionate,


slow to anger and abounding in love,


and he relents from sending calamity.


14 Who knows? He may turn and relent


and leave behind a blessing —


grain offerings and drink offerings


for the Lord your God.

15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,


declare a holy fast,


call a sacred assembly.


16 Gather the people,


consecrate the assembly;


bring together the elders,


gather the children,


those nursing at the breast.


Let the bridegroom leave his room


and the bride her chamber.


17 Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,


weep between the portico and the altar.


Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.


Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,


a byword among the nations.


Why should they say among the peoples,


‘Where is their God? ’” (Joel 2:12-17)

Going to church is hugely important, and there's nothing wrong with the rituals that remind of us of God's movement in our lives from ages past.  But, what God really wants is obedience, faithfulness, prayer, fasting, weeping, crying out to Him.  Sometimes we use our tradition and rituals as a cheap substitute for what God truly desires from us.  We use it as a crutch.

God wants to move in us, forgive us and show us something new.  God wants to speak to us.  But God needs us to truly open up, truly 'rend our hearts', to breath new life into us.  God loves it when we worship on Sundays, but God is equally concerned about what is happening Monday-Saturday.  If we can get this right, it will change the way our rituals feel.  They won't be a front, then, but a culmination of a life of faith.  Sundays feel different when they're part of a week that has been lived in obedience instead of a check off of our weekly to-do list.  Let us not just be people that worship God on Sundays, but worship God with our lives throughout the entire week.