Convenience

$4 a gallon for gasoline is making a lot of people reexamine the way they do things. It's made me think a lot more about how much I drive and whether every trip is necessary. For example, yesterday I had a funeral to attend. The funeral home is just a couple of blocks down the road from the church building. I've been to lots of funerals there before, but I've never even thought about leaving my car at the church building and walking to the funeral home. Yesterday I planned to do just that--but it rained, so I drove.

So I started thinking. Why haven't I ever even thought about walking to a funeral from the church building? Why do so many of us get in the car and drive somewhere that we could easily walk to? Convenience. It wasn't that long ago when we thought $1.89 a gallon for gas was high (today in Fayette it's $3.89). But still it didn't cost all that much to fill up the gas tank, so we got used to driving wherever we wanted to go. It was convenient.

Life in America in 2008 is all about convenience for many of us. Who could imagine life without a microwave, cable tv, vcr's, dvd's, cell phones, the Internet, central heat and air, delivery pizzas, dishwashers, washers and dryers, and on and on and on? The lyrics from the song by Queen sums up the American way of life: "I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!"

Well I'm not advocating a return to "simpler times" or "the good old days." But I am concerned about what all of this emphasis on convenience has done to us spiritually. Physically, this mindset has made many of us Americans fat and lazy. The same thing will happen spiritually if we're not careful.

Good Bible knowledge takes lots of time and effort to acquire. But what does the convenience mindset do to that process? Too many Christians show up for worship services having never opened a Bible since the last time they were at church. Are they looking for a pre-packaged, ready-to-consume Bible lesson that will only take up a few minutes of their time? Bible class teachers can fall into this trap, too. Some want to be able to come into class with little or no preparation time, read the lesson from the book, complete the fill-in-the-blanks and the crossword puzzle and think they have taught a Bible class.

Paul told Timothy, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15, NKJV). Notice a couple of things about this familiar verse.

First, look at the last part of the verse. The worker who does not need to be ashamed is the one who is capable of "rightly dividing the word of truth." The ASV, ESV, and NASB, respectively, translate that last part as "handling aright," "rightly handling," and "accurately handling" the word of truth. There is a right way to handle God's Word. We are not free to twist the Scriptures to make them sound like they teach what we want them to teach. You may have heard people say, "You can prove anything by the Bible." Well that statement is simply not true. You might be able to be dishonest with statements from the Bible and string together some verses so that it appears the Bible supports your proposition; but you have not "proved" anything by the Bible when you do that. Peter talked about some people who "twist" the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). Rather than being either dishonest or ignorant about the Scriptures, we need to be able to handle God's Word correctly.

Second, look at the first part of the verse. This is where we learn how to achieve the ability to handle God's Word correctly. "Be diligent." The KJV has the familiar word "study" here. Usually when people use the word "study," they use it in the sense of "applying the mind to the acquisition of knowledge." Certainly that is involved in what Paul was saying, but the word he used has a little more to it. That Greek word (spoudazo) means, "to do something with intense effort and motivation" (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains). We must pursue the ability to handle God's Word correctly with intense effort and motivation. That will be neither convenient, easy, nor quick. It takes time; it takes effort; it takes deep thought and meditation.

Let's devote ourselves to being diligent, hard-working Christians not only in Bible study, but also in every aspect of service to the Lord. Christianity is not about convenience; it is about service to the Lord.

I wonder if my old bicycle is still in working order?