I’m cheap—I freely admit it. I look for sales, scan sale emails from stores I use, and I buy used books (if I don’t buy it on Kindle). Recently I bought a book that my pastor is using for our church’s men’s breakfasts—we don’t study it but he uses the themes of the chapter for his talks. I thought I’d like a copy and bought a used one. It arrived yesterday and I began reading it today.

It’s a good book (at least so far), but as I was reading, I noticed something. In the first chapter, the author spells out eight characteristics that a man (or a woman—but it’s a book for men) who desires to be used by God must have. The first is a pursuit of holiness—being set apart in our lives for God’s work. The author describes it well, and then moves on to the next characteristic.

It wasn’t the content that struck me, though. I understood what it was saying, and probably have taught the same in my preaching life. It’s a good reminder.

It was the yellow highlighting of the previous owner of the book. He was marking various important concepts in the introduction and the first chapter. But, after this first section on holiness, there were no more highlights—none in the rest of the book. As I paged through to check, it seemed as if these pages may not have been turned before.

Now, I have no idea why the highlighting stopped, or if the book was read or not after this. But it struck me that this could be a parable about so many of us who profess a love for God, and express a desire to see him make something of our lives. We hear God’s call, and it is attractive. And then, as we begin, we learn that much about us—everything, really must change.

That stops us in our tracks.

Perhaps we thought that being willing was enough. If we give our lives to God, he will just make everything grand and glorious. We may have thought that surrender is key that opens the door to instant spiritual greatness.

Instead, we find that surrender turns us to the path of change, self-denial, cross-bearing, and the death of our own dreams. And that isn’t what we were expecting, and definitely not what we want.

So, we put down the highlighter, close the book, and look for something else to live for that isn’t quite so…radical.

For years I taught a course at a Christian university called “Spiritual Formation.” One of the key components of the class was following prescribed disciplines related to daily time in the Scriptures and in prayer. While many students expressed gratitude for being required to do something they knew they needed in order to grow spiritually, not everyone felt that way. More than once I was critiqued on a student evaluation for requiring such things to pass a class—they were much too time consuming for busy students.

How about you? is your life too busy to pursue spiritual growth? When you set out to grow spiritually, does the realization of the effort involved stop you?

Would the story of your spiritual usefulness look like my used book on the subject—evidence of initial exploration followed by a continuing pause? What story might it tell?