Greg Laurie is a pastor and evangelist out of California. I saw he is preaching a new sermon series: End Times, Living Like Jesus Will Return Any Moment. Things To Do Before The End Of The World. I don’t know anything about the sermon but that is some title, and it makes you think!
Solomon told us there is a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3) so I guess there is a time to think about what time it is. I wonder if Pastor Laurie is hoping we will create a spiritual “bucket list” and get busy about God’s business?
I know we live in “thorny” times (Matthew 13) and the cares of this world tend to choke out God in our everyday lives. I know the Apostle Paul told the Church at Rome to “wake up” from their slumber (Romans 13). I also know the pandemic shutdown made some of us spiritually lazy - I guess we bought into, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
I have a friend who is a famous pastor and is on television and the radio all the time and recently he told me, “Ken, we should not doubt in the light what God has taught us in the dark. Don’t let hard circumstances NOT be a place of growth, learning and doing.”
Do you remember the story in Luke 24? The risen Jesus is walking down the road to Emmaus with some disciples and they almost missed it. I wonder if we actually do miss it. Do we miss the opportunities Jesus gives us to serve Him, hang out with Him and actually enjoy being a Christian?
Everybody is busy but busy doing what? Urgent seems to always win over important and necessary.
I once pastored a very “seeker sensitive” church. We ran big numbers, and I baptized a lot of people, we grew and we grew but as time went on I felt like I was producing a show every week. All week long I was busy making adjustments to the service - asking, how could we make it better, how could we make it bigger? How could we create events that were greater than the last one? Everything had to be perfect, the sound, printed material, the music, the sermon especially. Something didn’t seem right about that. God was good during that season, but I grew weary, and I began to question what we were doing. What is this about anyway?
Last time I checked loving Jesus was about a relationship. Maybe we need an old school “timeout” to think about these things? Jesus said there would be fruit (Matthew 7) so maybe we need to be asking like the little old lady on the Wendy’s commercial, “Where the fruit? (beef).”
If you have not taken the time to think about the “things to do before Jesus comes back” you should. I’d get serious about it and stop what is keeping me “busy” and get a pen and a piece of paper and begin to pray about these things and let the Holy Spirit lead you into some next level discipleship and then repent of the busy work and get busy about His business.
He told me to tell you that.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.