Home Again

It’s common knowledge that a caterpillar is destined to be a butterfly. A caterpillar is never suppose to stay a caterpillar. Imagine if a caterpillar refused to become a butterfly. If it said “I’m comfortable where I am; crawling from plant to plant, living life beneath my potential.” It knows that it’s purposed to become a butterfly but because of the rigorous process that it has to endure, it refuses to attach itself to a twig, hang upside down, rid itself of the old shell and create a chrysalis that aides in its maturation process. That caterpillar would rather live life crawling, exposing itself to the risk of being stepped on, kicked around, and poked at because it’s alright with living life as a caterpillar. This is what I call Dormant Praxis Practice.
This concept is for those people who intentionally practice habits that leave many of their gifts and talents dormant in their life. For whatever reason, they get comfortable being in the caterpillar state; that anything beyond that becomes foreign to them because they have conditioned themselves to pushback against any situation that would cause metamorphosis in their life. Because of my first hand experience in ministry, the example I’m going to use here comes out of that context. However, dormant praxis practices take place in people’s lives beyond the church as well.
One of the ways people do this is by using God as an excuse to run from Him. This is the first and most prevalent of habits that these type of individuals practice. They create “God-activity” and ignore the areas in their life that God is trying to infiltrate. These are the individuals who do God’s work to satisfy themselves but not God. Because if they feel better about themselves they can convince themselves they don’t need to become a butterfly. Being a dormant caterpillar will always be good enough.
Another practice is doing for God instead of being with God. Individuals that make themselves so busy doing good for people that they neglect their time with God because they know that God will pull on them to do what He’s been trying to get them to do. This is slightly different from the first habit in that there are people who don’t mind engaging in their spiritual disciplines but they just ignore the Holy Spirit’s discerning pull on them. They will pray to God but won’t allow God to deal with them. Their time with God is not devotion, it’s duty.