Are you a passive Christian – someone who sits around passively in his relationship to God, waiting for God to intervene or impart a blessing?

You are likely familiar with the Simon and Garfunkel song "Sounds of Silence". The title is an oxymoron, a combination of two terms that inherently contradict each other. Silence does not "make" a sound.

According to the Bible, a passive Christian is also an oxymoron. A Christian should not just wait passively, expecting God to bless him. On the contrary: In His sermon on the mount, Jesus exhorts us to actively beseech God for His intervention and blessing:

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him" (Matthew 7:7-11).

Of course, our asking, seeking and knocking should always be in harmony with the will of God, or else it will be unsuccessful:

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." (James 4:3-4)

Are we missing something in life that we desire or need? If so, is it perhaps because we have been an oxymoron in our relationship to our heavenly Father – a passive Christian?

With these thoughts I wish everyone a rewarding Sabbath!