There is a continuing wave in the Church today that is extremely dangerous. This wave is giving up the best thing for something that is good. When a "good" opportunity comes by we convince ourselves that this would be a good thing to partake of, even if it means that we are not faithful to the Lord.
I can remember very clearly, as a young person growing up in a Christian home, that nothing came before our attendance in Church, NOTHING!! This is a heritage for which I am very thankful. One such incident that I remember was during basketball season. It was tournament time and the tournament began on Friday night and went all day Saturday into Saturday night. Well, I went to a Christian School so no problem with Church, usually, with the sports program. However, on this particular tournament we were having revival at my home Church (which was not the Church where I attended school). The coach called me into his office and informed me that he was going to call my dad and speak with him about letting me miss the revival in order to go to the basketball game because, "I know that you need to be dedicated to your Church, but you also need to be dedicated to your team." He called my dad and told him the same thing that he told me. To which my dad replied, "How can I let my son miss Church to let him play a sport and then try and tell him later that faithfulness to Church is vital? I would be speaking out of both sides of my mouth." The coach did not appreciate his zeal for faithfulness, but I know the Lord did. Needless to say, I was not on the bus that Friday night, I was in Church and Church was certainly the best thing for me. Some would say, "What was the big deal in you missing one service?" Well, when God calls us to faithfulness it is not only for those times when nothing else is going on, it is all the time. Besides, we are creatures of habit, one time leads to two, which leads to three, etc. you get the picture.
The mystery is, why do parents allow their children to do the exact same thing that my dad would not let me do and then wonder why their children are not interested in Church. It is because they have told their children, through their actions, that Church is second-class to everything else, or at least everything that we want to do. Hebrews 10:25 is clear that this should not be the attitude of our actions.
If we make it a habit of letting the best thing go for the thing that we think is good, then when that "good" thing is over, there will be anothing "good" thing for us to do instead of being faithful to God.
It all comes down to this: God has not called us to be great ball players (the chances of our children becoming professional atheletes is rare, but we need to train them to be great Christians for the Lord), God has not called us to be counselors for the weary at the cost of our faithfulness, he has not called us to be life-savers; but He has called us to be faithful and to make sure that our children are faithful. He has called us to raise them in the instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).
Don't trade what we think is a "good" thing for the best thing of the faithfulness that God has called us to.
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