Churcheeze or Christianeeze!

Do you know that feeling that crawls up your spine whenever you hear someone rake their finger nails across a chalk board? I know this will sound harsh and I hate that, but I get that same feeling almost every time I hear someone speaking “church talk”! You know what I mean. “Have a blessed day”. “Isn’t God good”, “Praise the Lord” or “Praise Jesus” (usually spoken at highly inappropriate times)… and so many others. It is not the words themselves, and I am not embarrassed by it, heck I would scream; “I love Jesus” in front of the world if it would make a difference. But, it is usually the people delivering it that irk me, and they usually sound phony. On rare occasions I have heard it spoken and felt power in it, and it meant something. But most of the time it is something flowery and superfluous, spoken with no authority, praise/worship or meaning and is usually intended to make the one speaking it seem more pious than actually intending to be beneficial to anyone.

And this is where I struggle.

God has done so many raw and miraculous things in these last few weeks, and so changed everything for me that I want to scream how awesome He is to anyone who will listen. I am like Jeremiah when he said; “But if I say, "I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9) But every time I hear my self saying the same crap everyone else says, I cringe inside…

So I am on a quest. A quest to find a way to express to those around us how perfectly awesome our God is. To have them actually hear what you said and want to know what it means or why we are saying it without turning them tuning you out because you just screamed “Praise Jesus” at an entirely awkward or inappropriate moment and they labeled and wrote you off as another pious and religiously filled worthless pew warmer.

Any thoughts, Ideas… what do, or would you say?

I am just thinking out loud and I definitely am not intending to make anyone mad, this is simply my personal hang-up and a search for a resolution.

Cheers