“We should pay attention to things we might be growing out of.” … That sounds like a funny statement. Of course we pay attention to things we grow out of!

Long gone are the days of trying to squeeze my body into pants that are a size too small. When a shirt gets too tight, it’s not showing off my muscles, it’s accentuating my belly … and the all-season Michelin XPS I carry around my waist!

No, we have no trouble noticing when we’ve grown out of clothes. When we were young we always needed something new because we were always growing.

It was either shoes, pants, shirts, coats, or boots. Always something.

Now we don’t grow out of much – at least in a clothing kind of way.

But we do grow out of things.

But really, it’s not so much a growing out of something as it is a moving on from something.

The other day I came home after work and my wife, Lily was on the phone with our daughter, Karlie. They were catching up on what was happing in their lives. In their conversation, Karlie mentioned she had been talking with a friend from Bible college days.

They got to talking about spiritual things and apparently the guy hadn’t been going to church. He kind of got lazy, didn’t feel like going to the church he grew up in, was tired Sunday mornings and so was just sleeping in.

In some ways he’s growing out of church, moving on. I don’t think he’s stopped believing in Christ but just outgrown the church thing.

How does one outgrow church? How do you move on from church, to a pillow and a comforter? … I believe you do it by neglecting your heart.

When you neglect anything it has an impact. I didn’t pick up my guitar for two weeks … guess what? It was out of tune when I strummed a chord. I promptly set it back down and walked away.

I played pool the other day for the first time in a month and I was missing shots I normally would make. I didn’t feel like playing all that long.

A friend who hadn’t been out to hockey for two months, commented that his puck handling was off. I hadn’t exercised all week and felt really tired playing. I wonder why!

The answer is all the same: neglect. When you neglect something, you lose something, not permanently necessarily, but you have to do something to get back to the way it was before you neglected it.

I’m going to have to tune my guitar before I play it again. I need to play a few more games of pool to get my angles figured out. I need to exercise throughout the week if I want to have more energy when I play hockey.

Here’s the thing: When you neglect your heart by not spending time with God, praying, or dialoguing with Him, other things will fill your heart and you’ll begin to grow out of things like going to church, serving in a ministry, things like that. It could get worse to the point where you’ve grown out of God all together. Has God changed? No. Did He become irrelevant to you? No. You’ve just neglected your heart. And the only way to get your heart back in shape is to spend time with God, talk, dialogue, get involved in His work. Then you’ll be sure not to grow out of Him.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you neglected lately? Leave your comment below.