Hypocrisy and self-reliance

I was listening to Ravi Zacharias the other day and I found some of his points in very poignant, so I thought I'd write them down. If  you want to listen go to Barriers to Belief Part 4 of 4 on 5/17/2012 under archives and I'd encourage you to listen to all 4 parts. He uses the story of Naaman the leper from 2 Kings 5 to tell some key points about why people don't come to Christ. It's convicting that a lot of them are about how Christians behave. This uncharacteristic behavior and motivation is the main part I want to focus on here.

 Below I have three quotes from the talk and I've given the time in the episode where the quote came from after it.

"The biggest stumbling block to many a believer - they end up going their own way, only they make it look like God's way." 4:39

"Hypocrisy is that kind of a sin, which even vice will pay a compliment to virtue. Even a vile person will pay a compliment to virtue by shouting, "Hypocrite!" 6:20

"Friends, some of us within the confines of the churches are going to miss the miraculous working of God, because we don't expect him to work...We have learned to be content with our creeds, with our songs, with our sermons, with our business as usual. We no longer expect God to break through." 11:00

The first two statements hit me hard, because I can see how it's easy to fall into the trap of the guise of religiosity and the guise of righteousness, but not actually being right with God. And I don't want to be that way - I want to be genuine in Christ and truthful about the struggles I have. Many of us Christians do what we want to do, but in order to look good, to sound good to our other Christian friends, say that God told us to do this, and aren't we going to do XYZ for his glory? Kind of as an exchange maybe? But it's easy for people to see through that guise many times and thus people see Christians as a bunch of hypocrites many times. We say we are pure, but watch shows that fill our minds with filth, we say we stand for truth, but ignore our own problems...

The last quote hit me hard as well, because sometimes it is hard to dream big. People tell you in a way that the big ways you want to reach the nations is impractical, impossible. But the logical chain of that is that God can't do it, so you can't. Because everything we do is enabled by his power. It denigrates the power of God.So we get caught up in the small things, get content with little steps - our parties, our programs. And we pat ourselves on the back.

Now, I know that I'm young and inexperienced in life. I know that I can sound idealistic. But God has done amazing things in the past and continues to do them, so we need to be people of faith. I'm all about pragmatics, but as I read in Dr. Platt's book Radical, I had to agree with him that we rely too much on our own personal power in the American church. The chapter on this concept in his book is called Beginning at the End of Ourselves. (By the way, I do recommend the entire book. Don't know if I'll get around to properly reviewing it, but it's worth your time if you want to think critically about how we can live this life.)

Here is the essence of his point, which matches up quite nicely with the third quote above:

"But what is strangely lacking in the picture of performances, personalities, programs, and professionals is desperation for the power of God. God's powers is at best an add-on to our strategies. I am frightened by the reality that the church I lead can carry on most of our activities smoothly, efficiently, even successfully, never realizing that the Holy Spirit of God is virtually absent from the picture. We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community." Pg. 50

Anyway, just a few things I'm nibbling on. I'm going to continue to make an effort to depend on God more, to be more honest about my life, to think big and seek God's face.