The Barrenness Of A Busy Life.

One thing I have been well aware of (and its something I have observed more in the breach than in the observance) and that is "the barrenness of a busy life." 

Satan works us so hard that we do not do the very spiritual exercises that are needed. 

The church also plays into this because she does not want us to be "men of God" in any real and effective sense.  So, she puts us on all these committees and commissions with the very purpose of keeping us off our knees.  She invites us here and there, all to keep us from fellowship with the Lord.  And into the bargain, we become all puffed up with pride and entertain thoughts of how good/great we really are, when in reality we are just unprofitable servants.  How much we crave and pursue popularity with men, and neglect being in the special favour of God. Our hearts are so sinful and wicked.

The church knows, in the words of Robert Murray McCheyne, that "what a man is on knees before God, that he is and no more.  A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God."  The last thing in the world that the church wants is a holy minister, a minister who is living close to the Lord.  What a handful such a minister will turn out to be.  He is living close to Christ, so he knows things about the spiritual state of the church that the church does not want him to know.  And what he knows he speaks.  And when he speaks these things, the church goes immediately into defensive mode, and behind backs, resorts to underhand ways of silencing such a holy man of God.

One way she does this is to keep him very busy with needless activities.  Keep him 'serving the wider church,' and you'll keep him off his knees before God.  Keep him as busy as possible, make him think he is indispensable to the future of the church, get him to see his activity as promoting the Gospel through the church, and you've got him.  Distract him with 'all kinds of everything,' especially church things, and he'll be no bother to a spiritually look-warm church.  Appoint him to represent the church at foreign conferences, and he'll soon get big ideas about himself.  Talk nicely to him, and bring him to see what a 'good churchman' he is, and you've nobbled him.

How many good evangelical ministers have been nobbled in just that manner.  How many spiritual wrecks litter the church.  The church has been, and is, very successful in keeping the Gospel in its place, and that place is not at the front of church life and service.  And in so doing, she has neutered many good Gospel-preaching ministries.

Oh, the barrenness of a busy life.  Flee it like the plague.  Don't yield to its mesmerising appeals.  It's a killer. It is Satan's tool to destroy your effectiveness in Christ's Kingdom.