No Depth

“Some fell on stony ground … and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched.”    —Mark 4:5-6

When we moved to Johnstown in 2005, we left most of our furniture with my son to furnish his new apartment. We planned to buy new once we unpacked and were settled in the parsonage. We shopped and shopped, but it was several months before we filled up the house. I actually enjoyed the blank walls and wide-open rooms.

We shopped at a local store during one of their first Tuesday of the week sales. After many, many, many, (did I say many) visits to the showroom, we finally selected a couch, loveseat, and recliner.

“We’ll take this set.”

“Oh, you can’t have that one. It’s just for display.”

“You have one in the back for us?”

“Oh, no, we don’t keep these on stock. We’ll order them for you. The pieces will be here in a few days, a week at the most.”

Sadly, many Christians in the western world resemble local furniture stores where everything they have spiritually is in the showroom. They have little or no depth of private life with the Lord. Many would describe American Christianity as a mile wide and an inch deep. American Christianity has the money, but Third World Christians have the wealth. Jesus may have been describing many of us as He spoke the Parable of the Sower (or Soils) in Mark 4:5-6, “Some [seed] fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away.”

Jesus pronounced seven woes on the religious elite of His day. In the 6^th woe, He condemned them for displaying their piety for show. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27). If we were to honestly describe our religious practices, would Jesus statements on hypocrisy and lack of depth apply to us?

A hypocrite might be defined as a person who displays publicly what she/he does not possess in private. From a store’s point of view, it would be hypocritical to offer to sell in the showroom something you don’t have in the warehouse. But, I’m really not talking about furniture. Jesus said, “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). Although Jesus earlier said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14), He goes on to teach that we must practice our spiritual disciplines privately to keep our witness for Christ bright and burning. Jesus spoke about giving, praying, and fasting in private to be rewarded by God rather than publicly to be seen by men (Matthew 6:1, 5, 16).

In order to be the light of the world, we need God’s Holy Spirit within, but we must keep the fire of the Holy Spirit burning brightly through spiritual disciplines. We develop a depth of spiritual life by spending time with Jesus. He waits for us each day to call upon His Name. Why not begin anew this week? Start or end your day with a secret rendezvous with the Lord.