March 2, 2020 - Useless vs Useful

As I was preparing to share this weekend on The THEREFORE Tour, I was studying in the passage that I have used the last few weeks in these devotions and came across another word/concept that peaked my interest… in 1 Corinthians 15:34 we see the reason we need to choose not only good teammates, but active teammates…

In the past I have given examples of players that maybe were solid with the basketball… in that they didn’t have a lot of turnovers… didn’t make a lot of mistakes. But, that in and of itself, doesn’t tell if they are good teammates to have.

It just makes sense that a point guard will typically have more turnovers than other players; why? Because they have the ball more often… are required to make things happen. One of my quotes I often fall back on: The doer makes mistakes! John Wooden

Our view of “good Christians” typically goes back to what they “don’t do”… they don’t drink, cuss, smoke, etc. Yet my belief as a Christian coach is to encourage active Christianity… doers!

Although my temptation here is to go into a long lesson on this, I am going to honor the plan to try to make these “short time-outs”…

Two weeks ago, I shared from 15:33 that the “bad or evil company” being talked about there is actually referring to folks that are lethargic, just living for self.

Verse 34 explains it further:

Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.

Paul here admonishes activity in believers… be doers! Last night I talked with a pastor friend that shared about when he was trying to encourage his congregation to share the Gospel with their neighbors. He told of a phone call he received where the person didn’t know if here neighbor knew about Jesus; when the pastor asked if he had shared it, she said, “no, would you come talk to them?” Another pastor I spoke with recently talked of his congregation not actively sharing (or even inviting to church.) An elder I spoke with invited me to do an evangelism seminar at his church, stating that they know the truth of the Gospel and talk about / teach it regularly, but don’t share it… do you see a pattern here? A pattern of lethargy…

We love to teach/preach/hear reminders that the world needs Jesus, yet the verse says the fact that they don’t is “to yOUR shame.”

The word translated “shame” in Greek is “entrope”; we get the idea of “entropy” from that word. Entropy is when energy goes to a state of uselessness… We have a lot of energy on our team that has gone from an organized functioning unit to spread out lethargy. The church knows that truth but far to often is doing nothing with it.

Again, I could spend a long time teaching on this idea, but the bottom line is that we have personal and corporate responsibility to sharing the Gospel… and when we don’t it says we are “useless players” and that is a “shame”!