While still in Bible College I had the privilege of helping a much more experienced preacher re-open a church that had been closed a few years. It was exciting to me. I was young, energetic, and what I lacked in wisdom I made up for with zeal. The more experienced preacher had a wife and two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was a teenager, brought up in a good Christian home.
One Sunday as we were going home from church he began to complain. He criticized the music, he didn’t like the Sunday school, he disagreed with one statement in the sermon. Suddenly his mother had enough and she silenced him with one question: “Larry, when are you going to get right with the Lord?” that was the real problem. She had nailed it with one question.
Larry had been saved at an early age. He had enjoyed reading the Bible and worshipping God, praying and witnessing. High school peer pressure had taken its toll and Larry had started drifting away from the Lord. Sheep don’t run away from the shepherd. They wander away. Prayer and Bible study is no longer enjoyable. Church is boring. Then the former worshipper becomes a critic.
The service is too long, Brother so-and-so didn’t speak to me. The building was too hot, the music was not my style, the preacher aimed the sermon just at me! Larry’s mother asked the right question: “When are you going to get right with God?”
A wonderful passage of scripture that deals with our fellowship with God is 1 John 1:6-2:2. Right in the middle of this inspired and instructive scripture is 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. “
A child of God who has a relationship with his heavenly Father can get out of fellowship with Him. Returning to fellowship restores the joy of the Lord. That is when the faultfinding ceases. All of a sudden everyone else looks better. “When are you going to get right with God?”