While It Is Day
I must work the works of Him
who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when
no one can work. (Jn 9:4)
The Lord Jesus had a
keen sense of His mission and how He must make full use of the time He had been
given to complete that mission.
On a
recent trip to China,
I marveled at how God had led His church through extremely difficult times. I
visited places where our church has hundreds of thousands of believers in a
single county.
Deeply
intrigued by how the church survived the Cultural Revolution, I inquired of an
elderly minister who had witnessed and experienced the ordeal. He told me that
when the church went underground, Bibles were burned and ministers were
arrested.
Yet when
the church seemed to have been destroyed, many brave women risked their lives
and visited the members from house to house to care for their spiritual lives.
They stood tall in the harshest of times and the work of God triumphed in the
face of oppression.
Deprived
of the freedom to worship, believers hungered for spiritual nourishment. When
persecution was lifted from the church in China and the material life of the
people went on a climb, this minister realized that the trials the church
suffered were actually good for the faith of her members. He lamented that as
the people in China began to enjoy the freedom of worship, their hunger for
God’s word and fervor to serve Him also sadly dwindled.
As I
listened to his words, I couldn’t help but reflect on how we have taken our
freedom to worship and to serve God for granted. How ironic it is that people
yearn to serve God and to draw close to Him the most only when they are
deprived of the opportunity! The experience of the church in China has
taught us the often forgotten value of the freedom in our relationship with God
and our ministry.
We are
living in the day. We must take hold of each moment and do His work before the
night comes and this opportunity passes us by.
Question for Reflection:
How would
your ministry and walk of faith be different if you bear in mind that time is
not in your hands?
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