Spirituality on the Radio

I was listening to the Baptist preacher on 90.1 FM:

"There is a crisis in Christendom of following doctrine and teachings--and not Christ. Jesus Christ did not come to merely give us goosebumps."

"Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes everyday and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

-C.S. Lewis

After reading 1 Corinthians 12:3, "...no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."

I wrote in my journal:

"We may believe through hearing others, reading scripture, seeing Christ bodily appear to us--as the Apostles and so many in Jerusalem did, BUT we cannot know He is God unless the Spirit tells it to our souls and it becomes infused into our being. If it is not infused spiritually, it is merely temporally tarrying with us until we forget it."

I have been thinking a great deal about God, lately. I feel like my relationship with Him has weakened due to otherwise hedonistic pursuits, like placing emphasis on my getting goosebumps when I go to church. Do you think He would appreciate that I blogged about Him and the recognition of my erred ways? I think He takes notice, even if it won't show up on my number of profile views.

I would so readily put all things of myself (pride, ambition, selfishness, lack of love, lack of kindness) to death if I could just remember one thing, and retain it in the foreground of my mind's eye: That I believe in and want to follow Jesus Christ.

I don't know if too many days have passed in my life with me doubting that belief. Likewise, I wonder how many days have passed in my life with me actually living up to the full-measure of it.

"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it."

-Matthew 16:25