By: Grace Metzger
As someone who grew up in the church, certain things have become like second nature to me. Things like going to church multiple times a week, working in ministry, praying before eating, singing during worship, etc. As a child my mind would wonder constantly during worship but I knew those songs well enough that my mouth automatically sang the words without any thought. I used to be proud of these things, saw it as a gift that these things be done without even thinking about it
I never considered this a bad thing until I realized that even though I was doing the right things, it didn’t matter cause there was no thought behind it. I wasn’t singing to worship God, I wasn’t going to church to grow in my faith, and I wasn’t in ministry to grow God’s kingdom. I was doing those things because it was a habit.
Having those thing as a habit is not a bad thing, in fact it’s amazing to have these wonderful actions become an everyday habit. Where it becomes a bad thing is when you lose the reason behind your actions. It took me longer than I want to admit to come to the realization of how numb I’ve become to that. When you lose the reason for your walk with God, you become numb to the benefits of the actions.
So how can we correct this? The first step I had to take was to redirect my focus. Too often I allowed my focus to drift away and I lost sight of God. By redirecting my focus it became harder to lose the reason behind my actions. My second step was to make sure that every single action I took, I stopped to ask myself, “How is this going to benefit my relationship with God or God’s kingdom?” By asking myself that question, it reminded me of what my goal should be with everything I do, every single thing I do should be to grow my relationship with God or grow His kingdom.
Becoming robotic in your walk with God is easier then you think and more damaging then you think. The most important thing is recognizing when you start becoming more robotic and start to work towards being intentional in your faith.
Discussion Questions;
1.) Was there a point in your walk with God that it became robotic?
2.) if so how did you correct it to make it a more intentional faith?