The Third Commandment

To be completely honest, I came to the service on Saturday not really expecting to get too much out of it. Out of the Ten Commandments, I have always looked at the third Commandment as, in a way, the least important of the Commandments. It never really seemed like a big deal to me, and maybe that is because I never really looked into it. It was just another verse that I read over and moved on to the next. It is very interesting to look at these Commandments that God has given us as exercised or practices. As we continually work on these exercises, we gain “muscle memory and these things that seemed so difficult before, seem a little bit we easier.

That was a really important thing for me to learn in my own life. I get so frustrated with myself at times because I constantly find myself doing or saying things that I KNOW I should not. Afterwards I am so disappointed in myself because I know better and I feel at this point in my life I should not struggle in certain ways anymore. But I need to take a step back and really look at each of these Commandments that God has given to me and practice, practice, practice. As long as I am working on these exercises, I will be constantly coming closer to the life that God has intended for me to live! That is very exciting!

The wakeboarding analogy was an interesting one for me. I tend to be one of those people that settle for just getting up and following behind the boat till I am done, then I just let go of the rope; or I just don’t wakeboard at all. I have no desire to experience wakeboarding to the extent it is meant to be experienced. When my family got our first boat wakeboarding wasn’t as big as it is now, so we went water skiing. It was my first time and I got up right away. After a little while I started to cross over the wake and even do tiny little jumps over it. I fell many times but this one time that I fell, one of my skies came off of my foot and hit my smack in the face and broke me nose. Since that incident I have decided that I am perfectly content living my water sport life on the safe side. In my mind, crossing the wake and trying to experience water sports at the fullest means taking the risk that I will get hurt. I am just not willing to take the risk. Taking that analogy into my real life I am realizing that without taking risks, we will never experience life at it’s fullest.

Back to the third Commandment, I guess I never saw this one as important because I never really looked at the words “in vain” and really thought about what they meant in context to the name of God. We are to speak well of God, not misuse his name, not use his name carelessly, not make his name worthless or meaningless. To me this always just meant not saying things like “oh my ___” causally. It did not seem like that big of a deal to me. But it is true that our names are meaningful to us. It always sort of hurts if someone doesn’t remember your name or calls you by the wrong name, and on the flip side it feels good when someone does remember our names! God is not an ordinary person like Bob downs the street and when we use his name carelessly it is like we are acting as if he is just another person. If people hear us using God’s name casually of course it is showing them that he is just another person to us, not the most important person in our life. We make sure to talk about the people in our life in a positive light so why would we not do that with God? I don’t think I necessarily talk about God as a burden often but, I think I just don’t talk about him as much as I should. Not talking about him at all is really just as bad as talking badly about him or treating him as a burden. I find myself only speaking of God around my Christian family and friends, but around others I just don’t say anything about my beliefs, as if I am ashamed of him for some reason. I don’t know why I would do this but this weeks service has really opened my eyes to the way life should be lived.