Christine Caine makes a great analogy, comparing the way many Christians live their lives to hitting the snooze button on their alarm. Mrs. Caine wrote, “Do you know what it’s like when you have to get up, but you just keep hitting snooze until, all of a sudden, your morning is gone! When it comes to sharing the gospel, it’s time for us to rise and shine. The world is too dark for the church to keep hitting snooze.
Each time we become sidetracked or indifferent about sharing the gospel, it’s like we are choosing snooze and allowing the world to linger in darkness longer.” We all know hitting the snooze button is a bad idea, but it becomes catastrophic when the Church hits the button. We are indeed a slumbering giant, and our wake-up call is long past due.
We don’t know how much longer we have on this earth. We don’t know how much time the earth itself has left (Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13). What we do know is we have less time today than we did yesterday. We’re fooling ourselves if we think there will always be time to live on mission later. There may be no later! We are finite, and the world is full of evil. I may not even finish this sentence before my life ends. We never know.
Every time we hit the snooze button on sharing our faith, how many souls go to Hell? Only God knows, but one would be too many. Our days are spent largely in pursuit of our own comfort, security, and entertainment. Never mind our best friend is destined to spend eternity separated from God. The cost of having that conversation might result in offending them. I’d rather offend someone by telling them of Jesus than have them be offended I never did!
Christine went on to write, “Let’s commit to not hitting snooze anymore, or else we might sleep through the very reason we were sent into the world. Once the day is gone, it’s gone—and no one knows when Jesus will return.” We’re running out of time. We sing and dance while the world around us dies (Isaiah 22:13). What are we thinking? Are we so selfish, so arrogant, and so deceived we think the life we’re living doesn’t matter? When every day becomes just another excuse to live for ourselves instead of others, we are making a deadly mistake.
Jesus came to save the world. He then gave us the mission to spread this good news to all people in every nation. He went further, instructing us to make disciples of everyone (Matthew 28:18-20). We have barely scratched the surface of the work needing to be done. Despite almost limitless freedom and resources, we haven’t gotten the job done in the past, and we’re not getting it done today. We’re building multimillion dollar buildings only miles from where the homeless line the streets. We face an obesity epidemic while half the world starves. Stop kidding yourself. We don’t love people; not the way Jesus did. But hey, tomorrow is another day, another alarm. My guess is we’ll hit the snooze button once again.