"...Flippant and familiar..."

A quote I read today:

"The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ." - Oswald Chambers

Dag, yo. I don't know if that statement convicted anyone else, but I was sure feelin it. I come to God regularly with an attitude of familiarity, having expectations and arrogant ideas that I am somehow knowledgeable regarding the Almighty. Oswald Chambers says if we come to God like this and have never experienced the mystery of God, we have never truly know Him. I'm not questioning my own salvation here; however, I will attest that it's fairly easy to fall into this type of attitude if you're not careful. We come to God without respect, mouthing words of false praise which mean nothing, and then expect Him to honor our prayers. I would go as far to say this is asking without faith, as spoken of in James 1. By taking this attitude in approaching God, we doubt His holy mystery, we doubt His might, we doubt His knowledge, we doubt His presence. Of course, you're saying, "I am doing no such thing!" However, with an attitude in which we assume to understand Who God really is, we put ourselves on His level and call ourselves gods...as if we don't do that enough in our daily actions, we do it in approaching the One True God as well. God's full being and character is far beyond out limited comprehension, yet we think we truly know Him. Ugh. I far too often fall into this trap of arrogance. I need to do some serious work in my life, and start really living "4Him" "For Today."

In other news, I was going to help my friend Mike move from Grand Rapids to Lansing tomorrow, but he called me and said he's not quite organized enough for it yet, so that plan fell through. My mom gave me a bunch of gas money for the trip, though...so, I had the idea of going to visit my dear Uncle Wookie tomorrow instead. I called him up, and I guess there's a chance he might be substitute teaching, but he doesn't know yet. So, he's going to call me in the morning and let me know what's goin down. Apparently, he has some cheap Christmas present for me, hehe. Last year, he gave me a tiny little toy velociraptor (which still has the bow attached, and has been affectionatly named "Muffin"), so I'm pretty excited to see what it is this year. Hopefully I'll be able to see him tomorrow!

Peace.