I was doing a children's message one Sunday on the topic of food, trying to illustrate how God provides for us.  I had a wide array of produce laid out and I asked the question, "Where did all this food come from?"  One little girl piped up and said (in a tone that conveyed, "You've got to be the dumbest preacher on earth"), "FROM THE GROCERY STORE!"
 
Well, technically she could have been right, but in her childhood naiveté she had no idea what it really took to make those items materialize in the grocery store.  Perhaps at her home there was no garden out back.  She never got to see, even on a small scale, the connection between good soil, seeds, sunshine, tilling the earth, rain, controlling weeds, harvest, and appearance on the dinner table.
 
We all know better, don't we?  We know that even though God is our Provider, God doesn't just come along and drop the food we need onto our tables.  There has to be a holy partnership between the God who provides everything we need to make things possible, and each of us who apply the labor and effort to weave those possibilities into realities.
 
It's no different in God's church.  Anyone who believes that spiritual fruit just happens in a church is just as naïve as that little girl who thought that food originated in a grocery store.  People will not be transformed by the love of Jesus, and children and youth will not grow in their faith, and people in need will not be served, unless we enter into a holy partnership with God and supply labor, love, and prayer to help weave all of God's possibilities into the wonderful realties of fruitful Christian ministry.
 
Where and how are you serving God right now in context of his church?  What possibility of God have you taken hold of to try to turn it into a beautiful reality? 
 
We only have this one short life to pull this off.  There's no time for any of us to waste on lesser pursuits.
 
"We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work."  (John 9:4 NLT)
 
In service with you,

Pastor Tom