II Thess. 3:6 And now, dear brothers and sisters, we give you this command with the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. Stay away from any Christian who lives in idleness and doesn't follow the tradition of hard work we gave you.
Sounds kind of harsh doesn't it? Paul is telling us to stay away from lazy Christians. Why? A couple of things come to my mind. One thing that hanging around with lazy people does for us is that it encourages us to become lazy as well. When we are lazy, it encourages those who follow us to become lazy also. There simply is no room in Christian living for laziness. Staying spiritually sharp and productive is hard work. Idleness causes us to neglect those things we must be doing in order to stay close to the Lord.
Another thing that idleness does is it hinders the work of the Gospel. We are mandated to go and tell, not sit and wait. We are to stand on the promises and not sit on the premises. We are to be aggressive witnesses, not idle worshipers. The world will not come to us wanting the Gospel message. We must go to them and try to create a thirst for it.
The way most of us engage ourselves in the life of the church tends to make us lazy. We pay others to lead us in worship. We like to sit back and let others lead. While it is necessary to have leaders, it easily allows us to do nothing. We enjoy and appreciate what others do, but as long as they are doing what they do, we get the idea we don't have to become engaged. We become spectators instead of worshipers and servants. Is it any wonder many of us have become soft and unable to be productive servants of the Lord?
Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, work for the night is coming in which no more work on earth will be done. Today is our day of opportunity to bring Christ to the world. Don't blow it because you are too lazy to seize it
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