Fewer and fewer people seem to want to work. More and more people appear to be ready to live off the government doles. Increasingly numbers of young people have little to no work ethic. Increasingly the culture in America is less friendly to the Christian perspective.

All of this is a result of the Church’s failure to insist Christians participate in the work of building God’s Kingdom. People who won’t work for God won’t work for themselves either.

It used to be Christians understood their purpose was the saving of people and the growing of those people in their faith. In christianese, evangelism and discipleship was the work of every Christian everywhere. Few Christians see themselves as responsible for the work of building God’s kingdom today.

Instead we have come to believe God loves everyone so everyone will ultimately go to heaven. When is the last time you attended a funeral where the pastor indicated the dead person in front of everyone was going to hell? God has become like Santa Claus, the story tells of him having a nice and naughty list but the truth is no one receives a lump of coal and everyone gets something nice at Christmas. If this were really true then Jesus had no purpose in coming to earth and dying on a cross.

Like God Who will let everyone into heaven, the government will make sure everyone has a roof over their head and food in their belly. But the government can’t and soon won’t. Parents require very little from their children instead training them for government assistance by supplying all their wants and desires without requiring any reciprocating responsibility. Kids grow up doing very little work, either outside or inside the house, but have all their wants met so expect to go to college then get a job so they can be paid a small fortune for showing up to work in order to provide the means for buying the things they want. But business isn’t interested in kids with a degree; they want kids who will work.

The Bible is full of admonitions to work. From chapter one in Genesis where man was placed in God’s perfect environment to work, through the curse of the results from work (reaping thorns and thistles where we planted good seed), to being commanded to work-out our salvation with fear and trembling; God expects His people to work. Jesus said His Father has always been working and He too is working. So the disciples were trained by God to become fishers of men, men who worked for the kingdom of God thus glorifying God through their good works. Indeed Jesus’ only prayer request was for His people to petition His Father for workers to enter the ripe harvest field.

The best known judgment scene painted by the Lord Jesus is the story of the sheep and the goats. Heaven was determined by the type of work each ‘animal’ did; those who worked at ministering to others received heaven but those who didn’t were cast into hell.

I’m not suggesting you can work your way into heaven but I am suggesting that if you don’t work for heaven there is a strong possibility you won’t be going there either. Our failure to work at bringing God’s will to earth as it is in heaven has modeled a passivity for the work of God before our children which has resulted in their finding God and His work irrelevant to their lives, not to mention our unchurched neighbor.

It’s time for Christians to get to work. We must begin working at becoming better Christians through the practice of the spiritual disciplines which the saints of old used to make themselves spiritually strong. Second, we must devote the greater portion of our time, talent and treasure to the proclamation of the gospel and the spiritual development of all people. Third, we are to work in the marketplace as people possessed for God’s glory. Fourth, we must insist our children work around our house without pay then get a job to earn income to buy the things they want while parents provide their children what they really need. Finally, we must insist our church leaders train, challenge and insist that all people attending church are doing the work of the ministry instead of just the paid staff.

These steps won’t turn around our churches or our country in the next twelve months but over the next twelve years we get much closer to being the nation and community we used to be and move much closer to the one God has called us to be.