I played golf last week. I wasn’t any good . . .

That night a friend of mine joked with me that golf was for "fat preachers." His humor stung, because I knew He was right.

Now don’t get bent out of shape over the specifics of golf or engage in any discussion about recreational activity vs. workaholics. Let me continue. I knew that I was getting to be a "fat preacher." Slowly I have succumbed to the pleasures available all around me. Eating at a slightly more expensive restaurant, "relaxing" after a day of work with mindless sitcoms or challenging my office mate to another computer game. Few have room to point a finger at me and say that I am slothful and lazy, for even our Christian society finds this behavior normal, and even classifies it as "healthy." Yet I point my own finger at my heart and flesh, and even today I am in a period of repentance and reconsecration to Jesus and His life.

Jesus said, "My yoke is easy," but it is still a yoke of work, not "easy," as in easy chair. Jesus said, "My burden is light," as in the "momentary light afflictions" Paul suffered. I see nothing in the life of Jesus, nor the Apostles, nor the saints who have followed, that reflects a life of ease-- rather, that of careful urgency.

I sense that in my spirit a subtle deception has taken place through the intoxication of my own pleasures and saturation of the culture around me. Instead of hearing my Master’s cry, "Redeem the time for the days are evil," I sing the anthem of our flesh: "Relax, eat, drink, be moral and merry."

But unlike you and me, God is very much in a hurry and casts aside everything that weighs Him down and entangles Him from His salvation mission. Through 2 Peter 3:9, we hear God crying that He is not willing that any should perish. Yet we happily fill our time with pursuits that summarize our wanton careless use of time, while millions perish destitute of any knowledge of the salvation in which we so happily bask. Jesus is urgent in His command to GO and proclaim freedom for the captives from the penalty, from the pleasure, from the power of sin and finally from the presence of sin. Do we not recognize the terrible urgency of peoples’ need? Are we so lacking in love that we are content to see them slip into eternity without Jesus? Do we not see the urgency of the Father anxious to save His children from their terrible predicament? We can muster up no urgency for them. Rather, in its place stands an urgency for our television program or our self-fullfilling activity of pleasure, like my seemingly innocent game of golf.

I am not talking about work for work’s sake but diligently giving ourselves to the work of the Gospel for Christ’s sake, offering up ourselves as living sacrifices to Him, considering nothing our own, be it a $15 green fee or a fifteen minute break.

Dear friend, may God forgive us for our careless consideration of each hour and restore a passion for Him that will reflect in our urgency for the lost.