In T-minus five days, eighteen hours and fifteen minutes, Gospel Light Baptist Church will be transformed into a bustling amusement park and kids ages five to eleven will swarm the church for our annual VBS, Vacation Bible School. That means we volunteers have a busy week ahead of us. From games to snacks to crafts, everyone has a lot of preparation to do. This year I'm leading music with Travis and that means lots of gettin' ready - memorizing choreography, practicing teaching, decorating, picking ice breaker games, learning the Bible lessons and memory verse. We do all this preparing so that next week, at nine-thirty Monday morning, we'll be ready for every kid, for every song, for everything.
VBS isn't the only thing we prepare for. We prepare for lots of things - vacations, for tests, for houseguests, for school. And, for the most part, we prepare for them well. Then why, I wonder, don't we heed Paul's words to Titus in Titus 3:1 and "prepare for every good deed"? Why don't we spend our time serving others, being on watch for any available good deed for us to do, every sacrifice to take, every word of kindness to speak, every act of love to show? Why don't we get ready for that?
The simple answer is that preparation takes a lot of work and in our still sinful hearts, we try to cling to our selfish ways. Service hurts. Sacrifice hurts. "Every good deed" hurts. But Paul's words in Titus 3:1 were not an option. They weren't a gentle encouragement, a silly idea. They were a command from God - to Titus, and to us. And so even when it hurts, we are to get ready to serve, to love and to give.
I'm excited to get ready for VBS next week. But I'm even more excited to get ready for the good deeds "which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) I'm excited to start gettin' ready.
VBS isn't the only thing we prepare for. We prepare for lots of things - vacations, for tests, for houseguests, for school. And, for the most part, we prepare for them well. Then why, I wonder, don't we heed Paul's words to Titus in Titus 3:1 and "prepare for every good deed"? Why don't we spend our time serving others, being on watch for any available good deed for us to do, every sacrifice to take, every word of kindness to speak, every act of love to show? Why don't we get ready for that?
The simple answer is that preparation takes a lot of work and in our still sinful hearts, we try to cling to our selfish ways. Service hurts. Sacrifice hurts. "Every good deed" hurts. But Paul's words in Titus 3:1 were not an option. They weren't a gentle encouragement, a silly idea. They were a command from God - to Titus, and to us. And so even when it hurts, we are to get ready to serve, to love and to give.
I'm excited to get ready for VBS next week. But I'm even more excited to get ready for the good deeds "which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) I'm excited to start gettin' ready.