{"id":797,"date":"2019-05-15T17:30:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T23:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=797"},"modified":"2019-05-13T07:14:48","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T13:14:48","slug":"god-has-left-the-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=797","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;God has left the building&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">[To follow <strong><em>The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on <strong><em>Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: <strong><em>Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, &#8220;Notify me,&#8221; it won&#8217;t post publicly. If you don&#8217;t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other morning I put a mug of water into the microwave as I always do to make tea. When I took it out two minutes later, the water was cold. Oops. I forgot to turn on the microwave! It reminded me of last August when the same thing happened. Then I paid attention as I turned it on: the fan whirred, the light came on, the turntable rotated. Two minutes later, the unit beeped four times, and the display reported, &#8220;Food is ready.&#8221; Voila! Except the water was still cold.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everything worked except the microwaves! That is, no transformation! All form, no substance. And interestingly, it didn&#8217;t even provide an error message. Famous U2 vocalist Bono defines religion as \u201cwhat happens when God has left the building.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>[Samson] did not know that the Lord had left him.\u201d<\/em> (<em>Judges 16.20, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus says about the church at Sardis:<em> \u201cYou have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead.\u201d (Revelation 3.2, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Having a form of godliness, but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3.5, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">True of churches. True of individuals. God has to do the work of transformation as we allow him access through the Word and prayer, and we respond in obedience.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other morning I put a mug of water into the microwave as I always do to make tea. When I took it out two minutes later, the water was cold. Oops. I forgot to turn on the microwave! It reminded me of last August when the same thing happened. Then I paid attention as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=797\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;God has left the building&#8221;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-cR","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}