Thief of Time

Time – Our great enemy.

Time – the oldest enemy in the world. So much of what we do nowadays is governed by the time available in which to do it. Half an hour to prepare a meal. Two hours to get to a meeting 75 miles away – try that on the narrow UK roads! Ninety minutes to finish a service on Sunday morning – so we can squeeze a second service in. Thirty minutes for the sermon. It’s like we seem to rush everything including God.

So what’s happened to the altar calls?  What has happened to repentance preaching and altar calls for salvation? What’s happened to a Godly sorrow in the church? Time is too short to preach anything but a watered down Gospel. Time is too short to put out a proper altar call – we have another service to start in 20 minutes.

God help our Churches. If we do not have time to save a sinner then what on earth do we think we are doing?  Church is not a social club. Church is not a place for all the saved to come and be smug and grow richer. Church is supposed to be the hub of a wheel from which spokes reach out into the community; and to which all roads in the community lead as if leading to Jesus. How can we possibly fulfil the great commission if we don’t make the time and the effort to reach out to the lost? Centuries have proven that the lost will not reach out to the church. Add to this the fact that in 90% of churches in almost any Western  country you care to name, the Gospel is never preached and an altar call is never, ever, given.

I’d love you to prove me wrong but Satan’s use of our time in our Christian lives almost ranks at genius level. He has so convinced us that we don’t have time for everything that we actually settle for almost nothing. And that, my dear brothers and sisters, is just how Satan likes it. A resource rich but time poor church that does virtually nothing to fulfil the great commission.

All because “we just don’t have the time.” When Jesus comes for His Bride, will He be disappointed at the dearth of harvest in many places? When He judges the Church first, how will we answer?