I've always thought familiarization is one of the greatest spiritual dangers we face. We become immune to the miracles that surround us. We lose our sense of awe. The sacred becomes mundane.
There is a neurological reason. Neuroimagining has shown that brain stimulation depends on task familiarization. Novelty stimulates the right-brain. Familiarity stimulates the left-brain. So what happens is this: our relationship with God shifts from the right-brain to the left-brain. And God becomes routine.
The same thing happens with just about everything. The job we used to love becomes routine. Our marriages become routine. Kids become routine. Hobbies become routines. Every dimension of our life is subject to routinization. And before we know it, we stop living out of imagination (right-brain) and start living out of memory (left-brain). We repeat the past instead of creating the future.
I think that has huge implications on everything from worship to prayer to preaching.
Preaching needs an element of novelty to stimulate the right-brain of listeners. My preaching motto is say old things in new ways. In other words, find novel ways of communicating ancient truth. That is what Jesus did with the parables. The parables appealed to the right-brain of listeners.
The goal of every preacher should be to be the channel through which the Holy Spirit stimulates the anterior superior temporal gyrus. That is the part of the brain that is stimulated when you make new connections. That is where eureka moments and aha experiences happen. That is the part of the brain that is activated when you say: "I've never thought about it that way before." I am always thankkful when people come to me and say, "I never saw that scripture that way." I celebrate the right-brain activation!
I think one of our jobs as preachers is to keep God from becoming routine. We've got to help people think about Him in new ways (and obviously biblical ways). There are more than 400 names for God in Scripture. And each name reveals a different dimension of His infinite personality. We need to keep reintroducing people to God over and over again.
I think familiarization is one of the dangers we face in worship. Too often we worship from rote memory. But left-brain worship is often lip service. We're lip syncing. There is a difference between singing from memory and singing from imagination. Studies have shown that once we've sung a song thirty times we stop thinking about the words.
The same thing happens with prayer. We pray cliches. Our prayers become empty incantations.
We've got to keep our routines from becoming routine. In other words, one key to spiritual growth is reinventing our routines so we continue to engage the right-brain.
If you have 30 days to live; you want to live life breaking away from every possible routine. You will want to live from the right brain more than the left brain. You will want to savour every bit of life.
The point is don't put God in a box. He is not a manageable God. Do something, do anything, to keep your relationship with God from becoming routine. . There is so much more of God to discover! And so much more of Him to love!
