Are you Dumbfounded or just Dumb?

I still remember taking my three year old son to see a movie that everyone was talking about. The theater was packed, and when the opening scene started to roll, everyone’s mouth seemed to drop open. Even my son was captivated. As the movie continued, and our hearts became entwined with a young boy named Luke, his friend Han, and Chewie and C3P0 and R2D2, we were all filled with such a sense of wonder and awe. We had never seen a movie that was so real and the effects so powerful.

Does anything about being a Christian still amaze you? Are you still amazed that Jesus Christ lives in you? Are you still in Awe of His Power?

Or are you experiencing “Neural Adaptation and/or Habituation” in your Christian Walk. Neural adaptation or sensory adaptation is a change over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. It is usually experienced as a change in the stimulus. For example, if one rests one's hand on a table, one immediately feels the table's surface on one's skin. Within a few seconds, however, one ceases to feel the table's surface. The sensory neurons stimulated by the table's surface respond immediately, but then respond less and less until they may not respond at all; this is neural adaptation.

Habituation - In psychology, habituation is an example of non-associative learning in which there is a progressive diminution of behavioral response probability with repetition of a stimulus. It is another form of integration. An animal first responds to a stimulus, but if it is neither rewarding nor harmful the animal reduces subsequent responses. One example of this can be seen in small song birds - if a stuffed owl (or similar predator) is put into the cage, the birds initially react to it as though it were a real predator. Soon the birds react less, showing habituationHabituation need not be conscious - for example, a short time after we get dressed, the stimulus clothing creates disappears from our nervous systems and we become unaware of it. In this way, habituation is used to ignore any continual stimulus,

Acts 3:10 (NKJV) Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder (thambano – astonished, flabbergasted, stupefied, thunderstruck, dumbfounded – as if struck dumb with astonishment and surprise) and amazement at what had happened to him. [ekstasis—An ecstasy in which the mind is for a time carried, as it were, out of or beyond itself and lost. Great astonishment, amazement]

When was the last time you were speechless at something God did in your life? When was the last time you were “thunderstruck”. I personally think that the Christian life is meant to be amazing. God loves it when we are dumbfounded by His Glory. Most of the time we are just plain ole “dumb”. We rush around never noticing or appreciating how much He does for us.

Are you Dumbfounded or just Dumb?

Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed (ekthambos—utterly astounded).

Just because you know what God says about Jesus, doesn’t guarantee that you will be amazed when you see Him. In fact, it is often the ones who think they know it all who are the most bored with Jesus, the most unexcited when it comes to the reality of Jesus.

So this crowd gathered. They had no clue that they were dead men walking. They thought they had life all figured out. They were Jews, sons of the favored one, Abraham. They thought their afterlife was secure, their blessings promised by El Elyon, God Most High. El Shaddai, the sufficient one, had promised Abraham in the power of His might.

'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise'?"(Matt 21:16)

How is your Praise of Jesus this morning? Are you honoring Him as Savior with your words and life? Are you still amazed at Christ in your life?

Today, in what begins the Passion Week of Christ, you are in a position to make decisions about this prophet that will impact your life and your eternity. You must examine your hearts, just as these Jews in Solomon’s porch, and decide who you will honor with your life! Who amazes and captures your heart? I don’t care when you became a Christian. It could be 1 year ago. It could be 40 years ago. What matters is TODAY! What matters is the IMPACT Jesus has on your heart TODAY!

The babes who honored and praised Jesus upon His entry into Jerusalem and here in the Temple, did so from simple faith, fulfilling centuries old prophecy.

The self-righteous and hardened priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that Jesus did, and still they despised Him. They and a multitude of others crucified the Son of God, because they chose not to honor Him as the Son of God. We need to see as babies today, we need to be “oohed and aahed” by the Son of God. We need to let Him touch our hearts anew. Will you allow your heart to be amazed once again?

What are You Kicking?

This chicken is hilarious! I saw this at the same time I was meditating on something strange that a man of God said to Eli the Priest in 1 Samuel 2:29:

Why do you kick against my sacrifice and my offering which I have commanded in my dwelling, and honor your sons above Me, by making yourselves fat with the choicest of every offering of My people Israel?

It seems that God wants His people to honor Him above all else. Eli thought he was honoring God by being Priest, but because he was allowing his sons Hophni and Phineas to profane the office of Priest, God said he was honoring them and not Him. In fact, Eli was even getting fat from the behavior of his sons.
We may think we are honoring God by going to church and sometimes reading our Bible, sometimes praying, sometimes giving money, but what really makes us fat? What really do we desire in our lives?

If we fudge at giving God everything, if we ignore His Word, ignore His commands, we are really "Kicking" at the things of God. We are "kicking" at the wrong goal. To paraphrase the commercial: "our kick is not right."

As we begin a new year, we need to determine what and who we will honor in 2008. We need to get our kick right. The young boy Samuel is our example of one who got his "kick" right. 1 Samuel 3:19 says the Samuel let none of God's words fall to the ground. For the Lord revealed Himself ...by the word of the Lord. Clearly Samuel was a young man who honored God.

May 2008 be a year in which we chose and commit to honoring God with everything we are and have. We want to have that kick that propels us to God's finish line. We want to Kick the Winning Field Goal.