Sin Classic

Tonight in our Youth Series I am speaking on Laziness, and my mind keeps circling one single question: Am i making the best use of my time?

My thoughts run at random and seem rather unconnected as i muse tonight's topic. I find myself now thinking about sin, even more of what I like to call the classic sins. I am speaking of the one's the church has held over the head's of its people for many years now, namely drugs, sex, rock and roll, and gambling. We love speaking of these things, and being realistic, probably because as ministers we battle them ourself in one form or another.

This world is being eat alive by these even as we speak. While some in the emergent church movement tends to spend times addressing social sin, those of a traditonal flavor tend to lurk in the areas mentioned above still today. Oddly enough, some in both realms embrace the sins the other speaks out against. While the traditonalist cares less about global warming and environtmental care, the new movements are embracing social drinking, Hollywood, and gambling as past times. Each points their finger at the other and name brand with words like bigoted fundamentalist and liberal socialist. But as I muse the topic tonight and search the scriptures, i believe there to be question that could keep either classification from embracing anything harmful, whether it be personally or socially. That question is: Am I making the best use of my time? Consider the words of James in chapter 4:13-17:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Whatever you may brand yourself (Christian, Disciple, Christ-Follower or whatever new-fangled name you find to tell us what you don't identify with) the call remains the same. That call is to make wise use of all of our time. Fact is, there is so much to do for the Christian that the standard person may not ever consider. I am not going to get into the argument with any whether the little things we may do are right or wrong. It's not the venue. I think if we do, we may prevent some hazards, but we will miss the overall point of being set free. Not to mention, the person seeking true wisdom will be guided into all truth. Our freedom is to bring freedom to others. And we will never do that as time wasters.

So I ask, "What are you doing today?" Could sin, in it's most classic form, not be so much doing wrong things, but not doing right things we are called to? Call it circular logic. but i think it's worth a thought.