Brandy’s View of Life…At 6pm

Brandy’s View of Life…At 6pm | April 29, 2009

Since we didn’t have a “Life at 6pm” service Sunday night to blog about (by the way, thank you ladies of the Women’s Ministry for a great service), I had to come up with a topic for today’s blog. It was either the topic I’m about to share with you or “A Closer Look at Matthew Chapter 1”, and this is what was pulled from the hat. Don’t worry. Some day we’ll tackle Matthew 1. Now grab a tissue and wipe away those tears of sadness so we can move on to the topic at hand.

I was sitting at home on Saturday night watching a video of the Christian comedian Chonda Pierce for the second time that day (hey, the girl is hilarious). She’s an excellent comedian who even cracks herself up at some of the things that she makes up. That amazes me. What amazes me even more is that in her acts she works in serious gospel messages. At one point in the video she speaks on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. She was talking about how churches from many different religions all share this one piece of ground where Jesus was crucified. They all take their turns worshipping God and acknowledging what happened on that very spot, all in their own way. They’re not fighting over who’s right and who’s obviously not. They’re not fighting over which church has the best choir or whose pastor wore the best tie that day. They have more important things to worry about. They came to praise the God of the universe.

As I watched that video and heard that story, I started to get so convicted that I began to weep. I know sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in what’s going on at Tree of Life or what’s going on at other churches in town. It really is. And I’m speaking about myself here. But I think that there also comes a time where you have to lick your wounds and get back up and do what you’re called to do. The disciples knew that. Their Savior had been crucified. The man they loved had just been taken and nailed to a cross. What did they do? They mourned for a while and then did as Jesus had commanded them to do.

The devil loves it when we get distracted. He loves it when a church that is in hot pursuit of Christ slows down, if even for a second. It doesn’t even have to be the whole church. All it takes is a few of the members deciding that right now, this is more important than what we are ultimately called to do.

What is our calling? What is the church’s role? It’s to preach the gospel. It’s to reach the lost and dying.

I came to the realization Saturday night that while I was so distracted by other things that don’t really matter, there are people all around me perishing. These people are going to hell. Satan is laughing. And what am I doing? Nothing. I’m too distracted.

We need to be more like the worshippers in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We need to care less about what’s happening to the right or to the left of us. We need to concentrate on the cross of Cavalry and blood that was shed for us. We need to say that we don’t care what’s going on around us, we’re going to concentrate on winning the lost for Christ. We don’t want it to be said of our church that we’re distracted. We want it to be said that this is where we are concentrating on what matters. This is where the Spirit of the Living God is felt. This is where Satan has met his match.

Chonda Pierce ended her performance with a song, the lyrics of which I’m going to leave you with. It’s a song that we have sung so many times here at TOL and I just made it my prayer ever since Saturday night:

Life At 6pm