I want us to continue looking at why our first love of God when we accept Jesus Christ as our savior, sometimes begins to cool like it did in the church in Ephesus. (Revelation 2:4) It isn’t always the temptations of the world or the lies of the enemy that affect our relationship with God. As I pointed out in my last post, it can be “religion” that distracts us, but it goes deeper than that.
It has been said, “If Satan can’t make you sin, he will make you busy.” Even busy doing “good works”. Several years ago, when I was still driving and active, I received a request from my pastor asking if I would be interested in leading a weekly Bible study for senior residents in a condo building near our Tinley Park, Illinois, campus (which is also near my home). The person who had been leading the Bible study was moving out of state and wanted to find someone else to keep the weekly meetings going. It was a very tempting offer. I would have actually been one of the youngest members of the group. It would have been very enlightening to discuss scripture with people with even more life experience than me. I prayed about it. In addition to my part time job from home, I was attending church on Sunday; I was active in our Iron Men group on Wednesday evenings at the church; I was part of a smaller group of Christian men who meet at a restaurant early Saturday morning for prayer and fellowship; and I was planning to start this twice weekly blog. During my prayers, God showed me that adding another weekly meeting with hours of preparation would cut into my personal time of prayer and devotions with Him. I reluctantly turned down the offer.
I still cannot believe how easy it would have been to allow good works to negatively affect my relationship with God. Maybe members of the Ephesus church were so busy with doing good that they had less time to maintain their loving relationship with God, much less cultivate an even closer relationship with Him.
Think about churches you have attended or other groups to which you belong. Have you found, as I have, that ten percent of members do one hundred percent of the work? No wonder those who are called to serve find it hard to say no to a new duty even though it crowds out their personal time with the Lord. Sadly, there are wonderful Christian men and women who burn themselves out serving a God they no longer have time for. If you continue to pour out God’s love on others without being refilled daily, you are bound to run dry.
Learn to say no to anything that takes your attention away from your loving, personal relationship with God, even when it looks like it is serving Him. The Creator of the Universe will find someone else for that job and He will appreciate you putting your relationship with Him first, as it was when you became His son or daughter.