I’m not going to be able to watch the England game tonight. If we win, I might watch the highlights. If we lose, being English, I’ll probably watch – I crave disappointment. I can’t watch because tonight is our church prayer meeting. There was never any doubt that I would go to the prayer meeting but I must admit to wishing the fixture had fallen on a different day – essentially I want to do both.
Be honest, if you have something on at church tonight, are you weighing up whether you will go because the football is on? I’m pretty sure there are churches out there who would rearrange their meetings around the fixture list. I’m also pretty sure that, of the churches that don’t, they will notice something of a drop-off whenever they clash with England games.
It is probably a sad indictment of our spiritual temperature that many of us are genuinely weighing the question in our minds. There shouldn’t be too much debate over whether we are going to meet with the Lord’s people and join with them in prayer or watch a bunch of lads kicking a bit of leather around a field. We pay lip service about storing treasure for eternity but, all too often, faced with a choice between that and doing something we really think will be enjoyable, guess who tends to lose out? We talk a good game about the Lord and his people being our first priorities, but all too quickly we tend to favour doing whatever else we fancy doing.
So, if you are weighing up whether to go out to your church prayer meeting tonight, let me point you to this old video by John Piper:
Perhaps you should think about going to the prayer meeting now, right?