stop-start faith.

its summer. a time that many take for their holidays and for getting a break from the routine that characterises the other 50 or so weeks out of the year.  what gets me is that people often take this time to take a break from church, too.

if you’re a minister then yeah you need your break from your job. but i think that many christians take the summer break as an excuse to not go to church. im not sure how that fits in with the call to run the race and finish well. that extremely well known, often quoted verse suggests a marathon mentality. we know that. but why do we apply it only when we have decided to come back into the church ‘term’, that usually coincides with the school term. most people hated school and were delighted when they weren’t there. why do many, and i throw myself in, feel the same with church? (i recognise that there are many many faithful and dedicated followers of Jesus who would commit to having church in a bin if necessary, so i dont mean to tar with a brush).

but enough about summer time. does this same principle apply during our christian lives and service? do we want to serve continually or are we driven by ‘terms’ or ‘sprints’ in the marathon that is the Christian life? Do we wait for those opportunities that are ‘worth’ doing or do we seek to serve whenever and however we can? To thrash a point; do we run the marathon or just put on the Christian uniform and do our sprints, looking great when we go really fast, even if it is for a very short time? over and over again i keep getting challenged by the fact that this is to be something you do for your entire life.

you are not to play christian some days and not others. and if being christian has embedded within it serving God and others (which it does by the way) then we are to be serving more often than not. there are of course times when we need breaks. but we should not be holding out for one or two opportunities when there is a world going to Hell. and it doesnt need to be the event thats got ‘whoever coming from whereever’ to make it service. personal, public, private, acknowledged, wide reaching, impacting one person. so many.

but the point is, this is why its called a daily sacrifice and not a ‘dead easy, nice feeling little stretch when you feel like it’.

I should be serving daily, but im not sure if im there yet. My responsibilities have grown to include my wife and hopefully our kids some day. my home is were i can serve by being a husband, but i also serve in church when i can. before you start, im not putting myself as an example. i grumble. too many times i grumble at serving. then people grumble at me and i grumble some more.

I need to realise that service is part of the package and not the optional extra that you add on to your phone tariff.

we have been chosen to be the earthly examples of Jesus! do we get how important that is!? i fear we don’t. I said on sunday that ‘nobody deserves to hear the gospel twice while there are still those who havent heard it once’. that wasnt my own phrase, but i cannot remember where it came from. we’ve heard more than we deserve. and it will be on our heads when He asks us what we did with it.

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