Today I was reading a book by John MacArthur and something he said really inspired me. He was talking about Romans 12:11 which says, “Not lagging in diligence, be fervent in spirit serving the Lord.” He said, “Often our failures to achieve what we ought result directly form apathy and lack or commitment. But this should not be true if you are a Christian.” He goes on to say that to be “fervent in spirit” requires more than just the feelings and emotion of being excited about something or the drive to accomplish a goal. He says that for the believer it requires a “Spirit-assisted resolve and persistence, not just human-guided good intentions” Some things have been happening in our life and I sometimes think if I try hard enough or have an excitement about it, it may help those things resolve or come to pass. But what I find is that I end up feeling discouraged and empty. This is how I act when I’m living based on me and what I think I have to offer to life. Living “fervent in spirit” is living resolved, passionate, eager and persistent after the Holy Spirit. This lifestyle leaves no room for lethargy, apathy, indifference or half-heartedness. It requires all my thoughts, emotions, hormones, feelings and hopes to be given to the Lord to be transformed and made new according to His will.

I got my Rubella vaccination yesterday. It was very hard to feel fervent in my spirit about a needle in my arm. I tried to get out of it all the way up till the prick of the needle. After that I had to go to work, the office is busy, my desk has heaps of work. People don’t come through. Circumstances let me down. My computer crashes. There are many things to not be fervent about during a day, but I can fix my hopes and thoughts in the Spirit and he will give me a fervency to live vibrantly through each day.

Last night Bobby and I went to the mall. I was getting my hair cut and he was going to the bookstore. As we walked along a man asked Bobby if he would like to take a free stress-test. Bobby said, “No.” Then the lady said, “Oh come on, I’ll take it with you.” At which point we began to walk faster! Bobby later told me how that booth is a ploy to persuade people on the idea that they have an unhealthy level of stress in their life. He told me, “The whole point they try to sell is in a book called Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. Maybe you’ve seen a commercial for this book; it’s the one with the volcano on the front cover and the all-time self-help bestseller. And if I had bought this book it would have tried to sell me on the fact that all of my stress and problems in life come from my reactive mind, the hidden part of my brain that stores all of my painful experiences and uses them against me, the part of my mind that reacts and I can’t control. This is the religion of Scientology, the religious philosophy popularized by Hollywood celebrities that tells you “Only those things which one finds true for himself are true. In Scientology one learns to think for himself - it is a voyage of self-discovery”.”

The world is full of deceptions and lies and things that we don’t like, but we are called to live dynamically above these things. Instead of being indifferent I should strive for dilligence. Later in this book I was reading, MacArthur wrote about apathy, “Such a posture not only prevents you from doing good, but sometimes means that you’ve allowed evil to prosper. For weeds to flourish, the gardener need only leave the garden alone.” I know that I don’t want weeds growing in my heart, so whether it be shots or work or people or problems…whatever my hand finds to do I’m going to do it with all my might! (Ecclesiastes 9:10)