on being drunk

Last Thursday night we studied 1 Thessalonians 5, which includes this passage:

1 But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. 2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. 3 For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. 4 But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. 5 You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. 6 Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. 8 But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.

Those who were there on Thursday will remember the story Nate shared about the conversation he'd had with the proprietor of a Middle Eastern restaurant. When Nate explained his job teaching young people about God, the man replied by describing how "drunk" people in the US seem when it comes to God and religion.

The Random House dictionary has a good definition of drunk: "being in a temporary state in which one's physical and mental faculties are impaired by an excess of alcoholic drink." But how does having one's "physical and mental faculties" impaired relate to the American perspective on God?

In the abstract, there are a couple of applications. People are made "drunk" by consumerism and a lifestyle of plenty. And made drunk by the constant drive for entertainment and things that occupy our minds without exercising them. And made drunk by a culture that insists that there are no consequences, that what John Lennon imagined is a good thing.

But I saw some concrete applications of this on Saturday when our FAITH team was doing some door-to-door visiting. We went from house to house passing out MCBC brochures and asking people if we could pray for them. Several people declined our offer with variations of "everything's good, thanks." One man told us that his family had a bad year last year, but that they didn't need prayer this year because things were much better. Another lady said that her family didn't need prayer because everyone was in good health. A couple people waved off Jim's or Nate's mention of Jesus with "I really don't want to get into that right now."

Part of me wants to assume that the people who waved us off were secretly hiding their true feelings of spiritual depravity and struggling desperately to silence the voice of the yawning God-shaped void that infuses all their waking and sleeping hours.

But I think that, truthfully, most were probably just drunk. They say "things are good" because they believe "things are good."

How can we get people to stop being drunk? How can we get them to see that there is a heaven, a hell, and a just God who vehemently hates their sin? How can we help them to know that there is a love, joy, and peace in living for Christ's glory that is greater and deeper and sweeter than anything the world has to offer?

I don't know.

But I know one thing that would help:

not being drunk ourselves.

In the psalms, David used very vivid imagery to depict his hunger and thirst for God:

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God.

My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.

I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land.

In our post-agrarian culture it is hard to understand the picture of a "thirsty land," just as it is hard to understand what true hunger and thirst are. We are fed abundantly. Our needs -- and, beyond that, our wants -- rarely go unsatiated.

So, here's an idea. Maybe we should try practicing hunger once in a while. Yep, practicing hunger. In other words, fasting.

The most common type of fast is a fast from food for a pre-determined number of meals or days. Plan to spend a fast day in prayer, and let the growling stomach or the caffeine-deprivation headache remind you to be back on your knees before God.

There are other types of fasts, too. These kinds of fasts can help us realize how attached we are to things in our lives that may be dulling our hunger for God. Other types of fasts could be

• fasts from TV
• fasts from the Internet
• fasts from video games
• fasts from movies or going to the movies
• fasts from instant messaging or text messaging

If anything on this list makes you think, "fasting from that would be impossible!" think twice about whether that may be the fast for you.

Let's be hungry, thirsty people.