Dull

“Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” Hebrews 5:11

Dull – Do you remember learning to drive?  Do you remember how hard it was to parallel park the first time?  Do you remember the mild panic when you first drove in traffic?  But now, after years of practice, you probably aren’t even aware of most of your driving behavior.  It’s so routine that you don’t even think about it.  Now you can talk on the cell phone, listen to music, watch the billboards and still negotiate the car to your destination.  When we see a driver who really isn’t concentrating at all, we say that person is “asleep at the wheel”.

The same thing can happen in our journey with God.  We become dull (nothros – sluggish) when traveling the road of faith becomes a routine.  How does it get to be a routine?  Simple.  We do the same things over and over and over until we stop thinking about them.  The same order in the church service.  The same evangelistic invitation.  The same communion procedure.  The same message delivery.  The same prayers.  The same Bible stories.  Pretty soon it’s all so scripted that we can go to sleep at the wheel.  We aren’t traveling any new roads so we don’t have to pay attention to the terrain.

The author of Hebrews chastises his readers.  “You should have progressed much further by now.  You should be teaching others, but instead I have to take you back to square one.  You have been satisfying yourselves on a diet of routine sameness.  Bland spiritual pabulum.  No wonder you haven’t grown up.”

What kind of diet do you have?  When was the last time you read something about God that really pushed you to think?  When was the last time your prayers brought new insight and experience?  When did you last enter a time of fellowship with other believers and discover that you were on new and unfamiliar ground?  Or did you think that God only intended us to stay in elementary school?

There’s a quick self-test in the next verse.  “By now you should have been teachers yourselves”.  How about you?  Is your intention to be a teacher of others or are you content to sit and listen with dull hearing?