Available To Serve - Must Be Present To Win

Available – “Must Be Present To Win”

By D.J. Castilleja

The last few weeks we have been talking about the Church Family. It is our hopes that you will really grasp and take hold of this concept of church being more than a building, more than a place to go on a Sunday morning, but a loving, intimate family.

Last week we talked about the first part of church family. This first part is faith. It is our faith that unites together. It is what we all have in common. We could say that it is our faith that is the shared genes in the church family. We are a family because we all share the same faith in God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus.

And as a church family we all share in the raising of future generations of those who are full of faith. We struggle with other who share our faith, and we work to bring in and adopt others to our faith in Christ.

Today we are going to talk about the second part of church family, and that is availability.

We live in a very time sensitive society. Everything that we do is compared to the watch or clock. Someone once said, “Time is what we want but what we use the worst.” There is always something competing for our time. How do we choose what gets the privilege of our time? Who gets our priority?

What kind of things do you do with your time? Work? Play games? Go do your hobbies? How about spend time with your family? If you ask me spending time with your family is a great way to spend your time. What about your church family? Do you make time to spend with your church family? This last question isn’t as easy to answer. Even for me.

I would say to you that one of the biggest barriers to our faith, our growth, and even our church growth is being available for one another in the church family.

I will be honest with you. As a pastor. I will say that one of the difficult things for me is to make myself available to others. For example, one of our goals for the year was to have someone over for dinner and spend more time with others in our church.

If you are anything like me, your schedules get filled up pretty quickly and the spear time I do have I like to have for myself and Amanda. When things do come up suddenly, I confess that sometimes for a moment I have a sigh. “There goes my afternoon.” You know what that is like. But when it comes to family we make time. The same should be said for our church family.

I think the problem we often run into is when we start thinking of church, even Solid Rock Church, as just another thing we do. Or perhaps another organization, like the Chamber of Commerce, or a civic club. But when you got married, you didn’t say I commit my life to an activity or club. You committed to a person.

I mean think about it. If this is a family. What would happen if the father was never around? Some of you may have personal experiences with this. When the father is not around there is something that is missing. In fact, we might say that the father is neglecting the family. Wouldn’t that be true in any family?

When you commit to a church you are not committing to a charter but to people and relationships. I am not saying that church family should be a higher priority than your personal family, but it should be a priority, not a chore, or a duty.

It all comes to being available. You see when we are not available we will miss out. We must be present to win. What do I mean? We win when we are available to others to bless them, and we win when we are available to God. In order to bless others and be blessed we must be present. We must be present to win.

Why is it necessary to know, learn and make ourselves available? Why is making ourselves available so important? It is important because God has called each and everyone of us to build His kingdom and his church.

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, what matters is how available you are.

Can you relate? I mean think of the struggles we face with being available. What keeps us from getting into the word of God every morning? What keeps us from attending a Lifegroup? What keeps us from making a simple phone call to our brother or friend who you know is going through a rough time? What keeps you from asking your neighbor over for a simple dinner?