48 Hours

In two days’ time or 48 hours, I shall be travelling to a village, 4.5 hours’ drive from Kota Kinabalu. I just realized I had been invited a total of 12 times in the past 12 months since I took up my pastoral role in Kota Kinabalu. I was more than anything ready to stop travelling, but due to pressing needs I am still preaching in faraway places in my 61st year. I planned to stop when I turned 55 yo but added another 6 years to my exertions for the Lord.

The church still needs solid preaching and more and more people are no longer reading their Bibles as they used to do. Electronic Bibles and easy access is partly to blame. They do not bring Bibles anymore to church but pretend to read it on heir phones. Alas, I do not know whether they read at home. 

There is a famine, says the Lord in Amos, not of food or drink but of hearing the words of the Lord. Even getting a hearing is getting harder and not many preachers can hold the people’s attention for 30 or 40 minutes of preaching. Last Sunday I preached a 28 minutes sermon on husbands and wives living in peace as God desires (1 Cor 7:15-16) and I could see no one moved but listened intently. But are 30 mins sufficient for spiritual growth unless they themselves have regular habits of reading the Bible?