How to waste your Christian life
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I wasted my time being a high school student. I skipped classes, did the least amount of work required to get by, earned a Ph. D in passing notes and goofing off during lectures, and essentially wasted my time in high school.
So when the day came for graduation and many of my classmates received academic awards, I was just fortunate to graduate. I had wasted my time as a high school student. I graduated but I really had nothing to show for it.
Did you know that you can do the same with your walk with the Lord? You can waste your time and your life as a Christian. This is our second week in our new series, Coming Soon. Hopefully, this study is making all of us aware that God’s clock is ticking down. That’s why the Apostle Paul warned us, “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:16).
Make no mistake: It takes time to know the Lord. It takes time to learn to live before Him. It takes time to grow in His life. And it’s far too easy to just waste that time. In fact, there are specific things that you can do (or neglect) that will throttle your spiritual life. Let me suggest Ten Common ways that you can waste your time being a Christian.
1. Allow yourself to be bitter against someone who has hurt you. Bitterness will destroy your spiritual life and take others down with you (Hebrews 12:15).
2. Use your time, your money, and your resources only for yourself and your needs. In other words, live life for yourself (and your immediate family) rather than for others. Convince yourself that you are just too tight.
3. Spend little to no time with the Lord in solitude – just you and Him alone. Fill your life with all sorts of other activities. Stay busy with things that have no real significance.
4. Neglect reading the Bible. They reveal Christ and contain God’s life (John 5:39; 6:63; 2 Timothy 3:16). They are food for your spirit. To neglect them is to starve your spirit.
5. Defame others or misrepresent them or their work (especially fellow believers). Don’t go to them directly if you have a concern or problem and ask them for clarity. (And if you do go to them, don’t really listen to what they have to say.) We need to understand that to speak ill about or misrepresent another follower of Jesus is to speak ill about or misrepresent Jesus Himself, and He doesn’t like that (Matt. 25:40; Acts 9:1-4; Titus 3:2).
6. Rarely (or never) read books with spiritual depth or listen to Christ-centered messages by other servants of God. Forget the contribution of the body of Christ, past and present. Throw out spiritual education. Live under the delusion that all you need is the Holy Spirit and your Bible.
7. Have little or no fellowship or relationship with other believers. Live as a solo Christian. Use the excuse that you’re too busy or that you can’t find any other Christians who love Jesus like you do.
8. Let envy and jealousy take hold of your heart and drive your actions. Envy and jealousy is often the root behind slander. Incidentally, countless Christians don’t know what slander looks like and fail to recognize it when it’s right in front of them. Engaging in or listening to slander or gossip is toxic to your spiritual life.
9. Never learn from your mistakes nor take responsibility for them. Blame others instead. And never apologize to the people you’ve wronged.
10. Waste every trial and crisis that comes into your life. A crisis is a difficult and unwelcomed opportunity to discover Jesus Christ in a new way. Don’t look for the hand of God behind the crisis and submit to it. Forget James and Peter who both said, “Humble yourself under God’s mighty hand, and He will exalt up” (1 Peter 5:7; James 4:10). Blame God instead.
Now the above list is in no particular order. And unfortunately, many other points can be added to the list, yet each of these is a sure-fire way to hamper your growth in Christ and waste your time being a follower of Jesus. Our time on earth is just far too short to waste it. This life is not a dress rehearsal.