Are You Too Busy For Jesus? - Kyle E. Sims


Pastor Corner - February 28, 2021 

“I’m too busy!” is an excuse you hear a lot today. Much of this is because people let their lives run them rather than them running their lives. Patrick Lencioni, in his book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family, describes our modern home life as “far too reactive, frantic, and unfocused.” When we say we are “too busy” or “don’t have enough time,” is it because we are maxed out in our schedules or letting the things of life dictate our priorities? If so, this can have disastrous effects on our marriages, our children, and even our work. However, the critical area we must examine is our relationship with Jesus. 

You can treat Jesus like some teenagers do their grandparents. It is always good to see them, but often you have other things to do. There is an assumption that they will always be there. Often it is sad when these teens come to a day those grandparents are gone. Jesus and church may be something you are thinking you can get back to one day, but there is a real danger that you could wake up and see you have no relationship with Him. You do not know Him because you never spent any time with Him. 

The Church has done a disservice to many in our world. We have taught easy salvation. To be saved, all you have to do is say the right words, get baptized, be a “good” person, and sporadically attend church. This easy salvation is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does offer the gospel freely to sinners, yet salvation will cost you everything. This cost is not just the initial change at conversion, but a continual process throughout all your life. Consider the parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Value (Matthew 13:44-46). Jesus describes a person who goes and sells everything to get these things of seemingly great worth. How much more readily should we give everything to have Jesus? We are to be a new creation in the power of the Gospel and must be rooted and growing in Christ (Colossians 2:7-8). 

This commitment to Jesus is even more critical in our world today. Gone is any sense of herd Christianity. We have crossed the threshold into full-blown post-Christian America. This means we will face challenges to our faith that have never been seen in our country before. We are dealing with a constant barrage of the wrong message in our culture. The church has gone from a respectable institution to either an insipid social club or a dangerous sub-culture. How are you going to thrive in this new reality? We know that the church has thrived before in opposing cultures, but to thrive in our modern world will mean we must stop being too busy for Jesus. 

My friends, It is time for us all to get serious. A half-hearted commitment to Jesus has always been dangerous. The reality is we need Jesus more than ever. This means we need to stop being an inch deep in our faith. We need to move from nice devotional talks about God to an in-depth discussion about the Bible and how it applies. We need to send our roots deep into our Biblical and Theological heritage. It is vital in our modern world, where we can expect to be challenged daily. Are you ready to face the challenges of Christian life in today’s world? Are your children ready? Is our church ready? Now is not a time for you to be too busy for Jesus. 

Christians are told to build up their treasure in heaven because that is where our hearts will be (Matthew 6:19-21). Is it clear that your heart is on the things of heaven? Look at where you spend your time, energy, and money, and you will see what is most important to you. We know we need to take time for our health, to spend time with our family, and even time just for ourselves. Making time for these things is hard enough, but the Christian makes time for Jesus. 

Examine your life. Where is Jesus not the priority? What are you allowing to push Jesus out of first place? It is hard to make time, but you cannot be too busy for Jesus. You cannot be too busy to be involved in the life of the church. You cannot be too busy to keep growing in Christ. The point is that you cannot say you are too busy for Jesus. My wife often says, “you make time for what you want to do!” Are you making time for Jesus? If not, what are you going to do about it? Will you continue to let your life push you along and away from the most important things, or are you going to take control and make Christ your first priority?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Reluctant ARP Pastor's Take on Synod

Image
  I am a reluctant ARP pastor. Don’t get me wrong, I love being Presbyterian (see my love letter to Presbyterianism at https://seventeen82.blogspot.com/2022/09/i-love-being-presbyterian-james-mcmanus.html?m=1 ). Yet, in that love is some amount of reluctance.  When I say I am a reluctant ARP pastor, I am mainly thinking about the meetings of presbytery and Synod. My personality is very much geared to getting things done. When I go to a meeting, I want to get to work and get the work done so I can move on to what is next. If you are familiar with the workings of a presbytery and/or Synod meeting, you know that doesn’t always happen. It’s a time for every voice that wants to be heard, to be heard. It’s the occasion where when you speak, people have to listen (or at least pretend to). You can stand up and say the same thing you’ve already said before. You can say what the previous 16 people before you said. You can go to the mic and ask the moderator a question that has other people scra
Read more

A Friendly Response to “A Reluctant ARP Pastor's Take on Synod” - Andy Webb

Image
(Note to Readers: authors who do not send a pic get my favorite pic of them as the pic for the article. Love you Andy)   Dear James,  I wanted to thank you for speaking so honestly in your recent letter/essay in  S eventeen82  and although I am on the other side of the female deacon issue, I wanted to offer some reasons why I wasn’t discouraged by the recent Synod and why I don’t think you necessarily should be either. Let  me begin by confessing that I too was once something of a reluctant presbyter. While I enjoyed most session meetings, for several years I found myself dreading going to presbytery meetings and absolutely hated going to the PCA General Assembly ,  which I found to be immensely discouraging year after year . One year I  actually asked  my session if I could give it a miss entirely, and they wisely answered, “No.” As a result , from the time I was first ordained as a Ruling Elder in 1997 till my departure from the PCA in 2020 ,  I believe I only missed  one  Assembly ,
Read more

Evening Worship Services and the ARP by Rev. Benjamin Glaser

Image
Good Morning, Recently a friend of mine compiled a list of churches, presbytery-by-presbytery, in the Presbyterian Church in America who offer a second service (whether that be in the afternoon or in the evening) on the Lord’s Day. The PCA currently has 1,930 worshipping congregations. 238 of them have morning and evening services on the Sabbath, or roughly 11% of the denomination. Not to be left behind I went about and did my own sleuthing to see what the situation looks like in our beloved Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Similar work done for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (the OPC) and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (the RPCNA) showed in those respective communions a near/above 60% rate for evening worship. Our Dutch Reformed brothers (CanRC, URC, etc...) are closer to 90%. I figured we would not be anywhere near those numbers, and I was correct. As with all investigative reporting I am sure my findings are not 100% on the nose accurate, however, I thi
Read more