Valuing the Word

I don't value the Word of God. I say I do, I want to, but my actions and my life do not say that I delight in the Word. I'm not as exited about digging into the word of God as I am about the new Transformers movie coming out on DVD. When that comes out I'm going to rent it, watch it with my wife and my boys, maybe have people over. I'll talk about it at work, maybe even at school. Heck, I talk about fencing and ballet more than I do the word of God. My life doesn't revolve around prayer, studying the word, and worship. But what else in there if not that? I have very little personal integrity. I am not the man I claim to be, and this truth is starting to eat me up. When will this be real? Do I just decide that God's word is that important, or is there an actual moment when it excites me? I never had to try to love fencing, and I only had to try Ballet to fall in love with it. As soon as I laid eyes on my children there was love in my heart. I see a good fight, and something stirs in my soul. Why doesn't this happen when I crack open the word of God? Maybe I don't fully understand what it is. I need a revelation of the word of God, not just an intellectual understanding, but I need to see this with my heart. I need this to be real.

The problem with church

For many of you, the first thing you may suggest to a person like myself who declares that he is lost, would be to declare that I need to visit your church. You may even suggest that I follow the ABC's to salvation. If I could , I probably would visit your church. I would like the pastor. But at the end of the day it's still a church, and that's the problem. People say that the church is like a hospital, and I agree. That's precisely what I don't like about it. I hate hospitals, they have no idea what's really wrong with you, they just stop the symptoms. I also see church as an entertainment venue, where we go in, sing along with worship, listen to a sermon, and go home to watch football. Our society, our lives are built around watching, being a spectator. I watch people dance, have adventures, fight for something meaningful, and change the world. I then pontificate about it and think that I have done a good thing. I do the same thing at church. I go, participate in worship, listen halfheartedly to a sermon (often I'm doing my own bible study during this time because I'm getting nothing) and leave more empty than I went in. They say you get out of it what you put in. I tried that, if you pour water into sand, you don't get more water.
I'm sure you're thinking, "That's an awful thing to say, why would you not want to go to church?" Because I don't need another church telling me how to look righteous, and then condemning anything that I may do that doesn't conform to their culture. I don't need another church, another program, or another agenda. I need to encounter the God I read about in the bible, I need to find Him, and find the courage to live like I believe that He's real in the world that I live in.