Dear Pastor John,
I’m in the process of translating the tract “Taking the Name of the Lord”* into Hungarian (almost done), and it is such a good tract. As I was reading it and translating it tonight, it felt like every word, every sentence was for me. I felt convicted, exhorted, encouraged; I just felt the Spirit moving and working inside of me. Then I had to stop before the last paragraph because tomorrow I need to wake up early for work. But before shutting down my computer I decided to check my Facebook feed, and quickly go over the news.
I found a news feed on what’s going on with Israel and the war against Hamas, and I only spent maybe 2 or 3 minutes with that, but then, as I was going to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I realized that the feelings I was feeling while translating the tract had already gotten dulled. The urgency to live my life fully for God’s glory, so that I don’t bear His name in vain, was gone. I felt the spirit grieved inside of me. The phrase that immediately came to my mind was “choking the word”. Then I was thinking about what Jesus said can choke the word in our hearts, and one of the things he mentioned was “the cares of this world”.
Then I asked the question in myself: What are “the cares of this world”? What does the news about Israel (or anything else for that matter) have to do with “the cares of this world”? And then I heard these words, not audibly, but in my heart: “Anything IN THIS WORLD that you care about.” I immediately understood: Anything in this world that I care about CAN become the thing that chokes God’s word in my life, if I’m not careful enough. (Family, politics, sports… anything.) And I know that having certain interests or preferences in this world, in certain areas of our lives, is not inherently evil. But we need to always be led by the Spirit, and we shouldn’t allow any of those THINGS take up a place in our hearts that would allow them to hinder God’s holy work in us.
I pray that God would make us wise, so that we would realize when something is about to become a “care of this world”, that has the potential to choke out God’s word in our hearts. And I pray that we would love the truth enough that when that happens, we would always choose to run the other way — to Jesus. God help us!
Zoli
* Going to Jesus.com Tracts – Taking the Name of the Lord