Are We Committed to the Wrong Things?: Committing Ourselves to Eternal Purposes

To what are you committed? Your marriage? Your family? Your relationship with the Lord? What about to the church, that is, the body of believers who meet together to worship God?

Are you committed to fellow Christians?

• Do you notice when a brother or sister is missing from services?
• Are you actively involved in the work of the church?
• Do you teach a class or serve in the kitchen or nursery?
• Do you send cards to the sick or minister to the widows and shut-ins?
• Or do you just sit back and let others do all the work?

Consider the early church as described by Luke in Acts 2:42-47. I particularly like the picture of unity and selflessness, especially in verses 44 and 45:

"And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need."

The commitment that this body of believers had to one another is exceptional. They broke bread together, prayed together, spent time together, sold their belongings to help each other out, attended the temple together, and praised God together. They did everything together with the aim of teaching, worshiping God, serving, and spreading the Gospel.

Perhaps this isn't a realistic image for us today. Many of us work our 9-5 jobs and then rush home to take care of our families. We come together on Sundays and maybe one other day during the week to worship and fellowship, but to be always together is out of the question.

We have so many other obligations. So many, in fact, that we don't want to give our word that we will do anything else for fear of not being able to follow through. We don't want to commit to one more thing because we are already committed to so much: our marriages, the gym, our families, the mortgage, our jobs, the cell phone service agreement, our children's extracurricular activities, and the list goes on and on.

What else can we commit to? We're stretching ourselves pretty thin.

But do the things we are committing ourselves to have an eternal purpose?

The most important aspect of the early church's commitment to the Lord and to each other was that the church grew.

"And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."

Acts 2:47

Salvation was the Lord's work, but the early church laid the foundation in their commitment to one another.

I have realized this week that a great source of my frustrations right now arise from my overcommitment, not to things of lasting importance like serving fellow Christians and bringing the lost to Christ, but to the trivial. I obligate myself to fewer worthwhile opportunities than I should because of an unhealthy obsession with marking things off my to-do list and trying to perfect every single thing I do. I worry about my children sleeping enough and all the dirt on the floors, and, honestly, the thoughts of committing to something else exasperate me.

But if I don't commit, who is lost? Or, conversely, if I do commit, who is saved?

What would happen if I were to drop the to-do list all together and opt out of trying to fix my kids' sleep issues? What if I allowed myself margin for a dirty(ier) house and the possibility of doing something less than perfect?

Might I be more likely to commit to teaching a Sunday school class or getting involved in a service project?

Might the Lord add to our number those who are being saved?

What about you? To what are you committed?