I will never forget the day when I was 15 years old and my dad interrupted a prayer service in our little, local church. With a panicked face, he said, “An asteroid is coming directly to Planet Earth and will hit us in a few hours. We need to cancel the service and go to a safe place. I just saw it on the news in the store next to our church. This is real!!”
The prayer and music stopped and some people started panicking. One person fell on his knees and started praying for mercy and forgiveness. Another person ran to his home saying, “I knew this morning that I needed to preach to my neighbor. I’ll go and share Jesus with him”.
The pastor said, “Let’s be united in one spirit at this moment and pray for protection.” We prayed and after that, the pastor said to my dad, “Let’s see on TV what is happening now.” At that moment, they went to the store next to our church and realized that my dad saw a movie about an asteroid with a very real news scene. Finally, we were able to laugh about this crazy experience.
As a church, we sometimes spend a large amount of time doing so many good things but the reality is that there are urgent things we are not doing as often as we should.
That experience with my dad years ago led me to formulate these questions:
1. Are we really doing what is required of us?
2. What is urgent for the advancement of the Kingdom of God?
3. Are we doing what is critical and urgent or just what is good or trendy?
This world needs an ambulance that takes people to God. The time is ticking and depression, anxiety, sadness, suicide, lack of peace, and many other things are trying to run faster than us and take the lives of this generation leading them to eternal death.
Matthew 11:12 says, “….the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.”
After the “asteroid day”, my perspective about what we are doing as believers has been quite different. As we all know, Jesus gave us the command to make disciples in Matthew 28:19. I believe that adjusting how we see life and time on this earth will change our mindset and will get us out of our comfort zone to love others by “going” and “obeying” Him.
As leaders and followers of Christ, we should ask ourselves this question:
How can I be more intentional (violent) in helping to advance the Kingdom of God?
Let’s make a list of what is urgent and what is not to redefine our priorities so we may be ready without regrets when the time comes.
Esther Gonzalez - Spanish Coordinator at KGM and associate pastor at Antioch Church alongside her husband in Dallas,TX.
Such a good and timely word!