The God of the Mundane: Part 2 - Grace for the Mundane

In my last post I was hypothetically questioning the existence of "the God of the Mundane." In other words, must every thing we do be big and eventful and monumental for it to be honorable to God? Is there a spirituality that pervades every part of the Christian's life? Regardless of your zip code, skin color or calling? The answer to the question is of some importance. And there are many who will have trouble buying into such an idea.

There are probably many and various reasons we have trouble believing there is a God of the mundane. Some of those reasons can be traced to our own personal history coupled with the baggage of subpar teaching in the churches we grew up in. Many of us ether inadvertently or explicitly were led to believe that there are spiritual things we do like going to church camp and very unspiritual things like going to the beach with your family. Playing Goofy Golf with your brothers, eating at Captain Anderson's and throwing the football with your Dad on the beach cannot be spiritual. Can it? Surely the Holy Spirit could not be forming the hearts and minds of people who chose the beach over a missions trip or church camp. Can He?

Regardless of where this belief comes from, there is in it a latent...or not so latent belief that we must fight against. And even if our reasons for believing there is no God of the mundane are multilayered, there is a singular remedy.

This all may come from the terrible lie that if we just do more spiritual stuff, God will love us more. Oh, we would never say that. But functionally, this is how we operate. God likes you more if you do something radical. Is it good to do something radical? Sure, maybe. But God cannot love you more than he loves his own Son. And if you are a believer in the gospel of grace, then you are loved with the love He bestows on his Son. We cannot buy his love through sacrifice and radical risk-taking. Doing so may betray our love for him and his glory. Or it may betray our lack of belief in the sufficiency of what Christ has done.

But if we can rest in the sufficiency of what Christ has done on our behalf perhaps we could also rest in the knowledge we can live a vital spirituality in the midst of the mundane. Me must fight against the belief there is no God of the mundane...which is really unbelief. And we must fight against it tooth and nail. Or beach and sun.