by Robert Searles

Created on: October 22, 2008

WHY ARE FLEETING IMPRESSIONS MADE BY THE MESSAGE?

Week after week we sit in our pews in church and hear the word of God being expounded. We all appear to be pious listeners to the word of God. Our eyes and our ears are studiously affixed upon the preacher as he preaches his heart out to his beloved flock. It seems as if after all the teaching and preaching that we have been exposed to throughout all the years that we have sat and listened, we ought to be making a difference in changing our society and our environment for the better.

While we listen, we hear, but we don't really hear. We are admonished to act upon that which we have heard, but we do not act. We somehow assume an attitude of complacency, willing to let someone else do that which we ourselves ought to be doing. When the preacher pronounces his final amen and dismisses his congregation, we all arise, sometimes shake the preacher's hand, and go back to our old ways, doing our own things, and the message, if we ever grasped it at all, has fled from us.

This was also true in the days of Ezekiel. God, speaking through him warned his people, saying: "And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they all sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. Ezekiel 33:31.

Why are we so soon to forget the message that God has laid upon the preacher's heart to deliver to us? Is it because we take our bodies to church, but leave our minds behind in some other place. Is it because we want to appear to be correct in our culture and appearances, and somehow feel that going to church is the right thing to do especially on Sunday morning if it happens to be Easter or Christmas? Are we among those with cold stony hearts, filled with guilt, hard feelings, and resentments, having a stony heart so that the word of God cannot penetrate, and take root and bear fruit.?

I have observed in my years of church going that before the message and after, in the church sanctuary, there is little that reminds one of the sovereignty and holiness of God. Children are allowed to race and run through the building. Old and young alike are gathered in their own clicks or groups discussing football, or other sports, or describing their daily occupations and careers; women exchanging gossip with little mention of spiritual or godly things. Much of the time our hearts are not fertilized with soil that will receive the

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