Guest Post |
Don’t fall victim to our insular culture: shift priorities and love a non-Christian with your time

Author |
Anonymous

It was a painful ten minutes in front of my screen.

“No worries that tennis game can wait, but it would have been nice to catch up for chats / snacks sometime.”

My friend wasn’t telling me that he really needed this catch up.  Nor was he signalling that this was a last chance for our friendship; or even suggesting that he didn’t understanding about my other priorities.  The writer, my dear dear, non-Christian mate Dan indeed has his own priorities.

But what could I say?

As I looked at my diary, there just wasn’t another opening… for six weeks.  I know God’s sovereign.  I know he will save who he’s planned to.  I know my mate can come to faith without me in his life at all.  But I know that the gospel moves me to prioritise relationships too; and that God’s leaving this current creation still ticking over so that he can bring more people into his family.  Like you, I do have a real care for the lost (even if it often slips away to the back of my mind).

So with a genuine grimace on my face, I started to type:

“Mate, with symbolic tears, I’m really sorry to say that I’m just too busy for the next little while.  It’s a mixture of life, family expectations, work.  Yeah I really haven’t been giving work the attention I should have.”

I suppose that’s fair enough, I thought; God really is sovereign…  And I really shouldn’t fail those close to me… or my work.. in order to put Dan first.  But seriously, what the heck am I doing?: I’ve seen him only twice all year…  And it’s not like I’ve been having much time with a whole lot of other non-Christian mates.   Ahhh, they said it would happen and it’s happened: most of my social time is with Christians.   Arghh…

I really believe the gospel and I really believe that God uses people to share it with other people.  Sending this e-mail is just lame, I thought.

So, as is often the case for me, a better solution came, with a calm re-think of my priorities.  The family, the church-stuff, the work-stuff all needed to stay high up the list…  So what could go?  Well, not my sport/ exercise.  Stopping the little of it I get to do probably would not be good for my mental health and wouldn’t free up much time anyway.  Likewise, for bits of down-time.  They feel good for me when I have them and feel right when I look at the Bible’s take on rest.

What else could go?  Well… here it is:  time with other believers.

As I looked at it all, it seemed like I was getting enough feeding from the Bible: during the week in groups, at church on Sun, and it’s almost daily with my wife at home too.  But other time I’ve booked in with Christian friends… do I need that?

Well sometimes: yes.  When I need it, fellowship with Christians, especially ones I’ve known for years, is a great source of care.  But also, it’s fair to say that lots of the time I have with other CHristians is simply enjoying each others’ shared interests.  It’s not necessarily always rich, Christainly-shaped fellowship.  We label it fellowship because we’re all Christians there, and we say grace when we have a meal together, but really it’s just comfortable, social time.   And I’m not saying that’s all wrong…  I’m just saying that that in light of how little time I have socially with non-believers, that Christian-only social time, is what I need to cut.

Maybe obvious, but it felt like an epiphany at the time.   I had an injection of joy as I decided to pull out of my regular social catch-up with other Christian friends.  In turn, I deleted what I had first typed in that e-mail and keyed a new one to arrange a time with Dan.

That’s it.  A swap of priorities.

So fellow believers, here are the questions for you:

• Is having non-Christians in your life a high enough priority for you?
• Is your social life full with Christian-only stuff?
• Is there stuff you do now with only Christians, that you could include non-believers in- sport, book club, going for coffee, gym…??

I had a mate once, who said he was pulling out of his weekly Bible Study so he could play in a basketball team with non-Christian mates.  I’m not sure about that,  but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. Around 3% of people in Sydney in gospel-serious churches and for many of us as low as 0% of our social time is spent with non-believers. Yeah… maybe these are desperate times??

Well, if you buy this, do something about it:

• Pray.
• Change your priority list and your diary.
• Encourage a Christian friend to do likewise.