Move with a sense of urgency

April 9th, 2010

Dana Fisher

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first… 2 Thessalonians 2:3

I see two things happening recently that are disturbing and exciting at the same time:

A lack of enthusiasm and energy from Christians
In-fighting within Christian circles

I have a couple of friends that lead youth groups or young adult studies at various churches. A once vibrant young adults study of 30-40 has fallen to 1-2 people a week. Another which was 15 or so is now dwindled to those same numbers of just 1 or 2.

From church to church the effort to do for Christ has shifted to “do for me”. Everyone is becoming lazy and apathetic. Kids aren’t excited to go to youth group, they are excited for events. “What can keep me entertained?”

As people leave one church and head to another(for various reasons) they can’t help but lob some grenades back that way and saturate the air with smoke and shrapnel. Why are we so quick to turn around and stick a knife in a brothers back? Aren’t we all Christians after all? One body, one purpose? Yet here we are stabbing ourselves in the foot so we can’t walk, or plucking out an eye so we can’t see.

I’ve been watching Band of Brothers and The Pacific and noticing how demoralizing it is to an army to injure their own. No wonder our moral as a Christian base is so depleted! The destruction from within is slowly destroying the church like termites on a wooden house and our youth are noticing and following right along.

Satan has tried everything over the years to stop the spread of Christianity. Everything from using Herod to kill the Messiah, Saul(Paul) as an overzealous Jew, Hitler to exterminate the entire race; I could go on and on. But my point is, he smartened up and joined the church. His tactics changed but his motivation didn’t.

What do I mean? He began inserting heresy, ever so slightly into the church one small piece at a time. And over time we’ve become okay with certain things and lulled to sleep. And so we bicker back and forth slowly killing ourselves off, distracted by nonsense, while the world slips closer and closer to hell.

You may be asking yourself after all that depressing noise I just spit out why I would be excited. Because we are getting ever so close to a glorious return. Paul always seemed to speak with a sense of urgency. As I read his words I’m always cognizant of the strain in his voice that the time is now.

Maybe you are sleepy, maybe you are one of those kids just following the adults along, maybe you’re lobbing grenades at other Christians. The time is now to get off our lazy butts and start doing something. Less worry about what’s on tv tonight and more urgency for a lost and dying world.