Application and diligence

Today seems to be the day of information overload. We start many things but complete few. Or else we get caught up in on-line games or in other time wasting activities. The world around us seems to be never ending in its demands on us, so that the Lord’s work is often relegated to whatever free time we have, if any.

The urgent has overcome the important.

How many Christians spend more than a cursory amount of time doing the Lord’s work, or even more importantly, spending time with Him?

We easily forget the main reason for our lives and who it is who promised to look after us. Instead, we assume it is all up to us and we fall under the curse of the Fall.

Gen 3:17-19 NIV  …. ,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.  (18)  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  (19)  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

But we are no longer under this curse once we become part of the Kingdom of God. Jesus has now taken the curse on Himself and broken it over His followers.

Mat 6:30-34 NIV  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith?  (31)  So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  (32)  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  (33)  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  (34)  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

So why do we worry so much? Why do we relegate the prime work of seeking His Kingdom and righteousness to the rare spare moments of time?

Jeremiah’s words about this are as relevant today as they were more than 2500 years ago.

Jer 48:10 NIV  "A curse on anyone who is lax in doing the LORD's work! A curse on anyone who keeps their sword from bloodshed!

Our swords (the Word of God) must be used and not kept sheathed.  We have been given mouths to proclaim the word of God in season and out of season. We must use this ‘sword’, with all love and wisdom, but USE it.

The loneliness of ministry

Towards the end of his life the apostle Paul wrote a final letter to his young protégé Timothy, from his prison cell. In it he urged Timothy to be bold in taking up the charge that he had been given to preserve and promote the gospel. However there is more than a tinge of sadness in Paul’s words.

2Ti 1:15 NIV  You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes.

After all that Paul had done to bring the gospel to the very ends of the earth and the esteem that he had been held in, there were very few there for him in the end. After all, he had planted many churches throughout Asia Minor, churches that were of great prominence then and for centuries to come.

But at the end “everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me”.

But isn’t that what happened to Jesus as well?

That is the nature of people. We often forget whose shoulders we are standing on. Those who have gone before us, in very recent times as well as historically, are soon forgotten. People want to make their own way. But they need to be reminded constantly  who has been involved in bringing them to this stage.

The whole concept of eldership, or more correctly ‘oldership’ has lost its power. Is this part of the reason that the church has been caught up in fads and fashions and the latest ‘move of the Holy Spirit’, usually somewhere other than “here”?

We often forget that our task is to pass on unchanged the faith once delivered to the fathers, not to try to improve it or change it. Of course our means of delivery will change as society changes, but the content must not.

Will we recover the proper concept of eldership in our time, or will we continue to follow the ways of the world in leaving the future to the young with no reliance on the wisdom of age? Will we condemn the young to have to relearn all that has been taught in the past? Or will we help the young to stand boldly on the shoulders of their teachers in the Lord and so further increase the advance of the Kingdom of God? Even more so, will the young reach out for this wisdom of the elders?