Have you ever invited guests to your home for dinner at such-and-such a time, only to have them arrive an hour late? You excitedly plan for days, shop for groceries, clean the house, and, at last, lovingly prepare the meal. When everything is ready, you look at the clock and wait with anticipation.
But your guests do not arrive on time.
You tell yourself, "They will be here any minute now."
But the minutes go by and there is no knock at the door.
You begin to worry. "Maybe something bad happened to them."
More minutes go by and you anxiously half-expect an emergency call. But the phone does not ring,
After an hour of waiting, your nerves are frazzled. But at last you hear a car pull into your driveway. You look out the window. Sure enough, it's them! You open the front door with concern as they get out of their car. When you see their pleasant smiles, you are a little surprised, but very relieved they've arrived safely.
As they greet you, they flippantly apologize and give a flimsy explanation for their late arrival. This leaves you feeling disrespected and hurt.
The dinner is of course cold, the excitement has worn off, and there is no more joy — only a melancholy feeling in your heart.
But you hide your feelings as you heat up the dinner in the microwave and try to be as pleasant as possible to your guests. You ignore the increasing disappoint that comes when he see how the food that once was delicious and appealing has come out of the microwave looking mushy and gross.
If that's not enough, further disappointment piles onto your disappointment as you notice that your guests don't even eat all of the food on their plates. Although, this you can understand, since it would be hard for you too to eat food that tastes like yesterday's left-overs.
At the end of the night when your guests leave, you can't help but still feel low-spirited. You wonder why your guests didn't make more of an effort to arrive on time. You inevitably come to the conclusion that they weren't as excited to come to your house for dinner as you were excited to invite them.
But this is how God feels when His beloved people arrive late to church on Sunday morning.
Some respond with, "Well, it's better to be late than not show up at all." I'm not so sure that it is. For one thing, it's a very poor testimony to those who don't know Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It shows great disrespect to our King, and to our Christian brothers and sisters who give their musical gifts and talents to God in leading His people into worship.
If we want to evangelize, we need to start from the very beginning. How are we to be a testimony to the unsaved if we are a poor testimony of our faith and devotion to God in our own church?
The Bible says we are to respect all our Christian brothers and sisters, and we are to fear God and respect the King.
"Respect everyone,
and love your Christian brothers and sisters.
Fear God, and respect the King."
1 Peter 2:17 (NLT)
And yet I have noticed in multiple churches that when the music starts on Sunday morning, only one-third of the congregation is in the sanctuary. People slowly trickle in until, half-way through the worship, about two-thirds of the congregation is present. Finally, when the music ends, everyone is there.
What happened? Did the people sleep in? Did they chat too long with their friends in the foyer? Did they stop off at Tim Hortons for coffee? Or did they arrive just to hear the sermon?
If Christians think the unsaved won't notice, they're wrong.
This is where evangelism begins. Do we show our respect to our Christian brothers and sisters? Do we fear God and respect the King?
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