Yesterday some friends came over to go quail hunting. The trip began with one of the hunters forgetting the key to his gun case which meant he had to go all of the way home to get the key and return before he could go hunting. My son wanted to hunt the morning with us prior to his afternoon appointment, but forgot to wear his briar pants and scratched his legs so badly that he had to quit hunting. It was raining early yesterday morning, and I didn’t think I would need sun block. The sun came out with a vengeance and my face got sunburned and my lips chapped from the wind. I also didn’t have my sunglasses and my eyes felt like they had sand in them by day’s end.
I was thinking about how much more enjoyable and easy things are if we spend some preparation time. Such is the case for our spiritual walk. Prayer coupled with reading the Bible prepares us for anything this old world can throw at us, but we have to go to Jesus in prayer and open the covers to our Bibles and spend some time in it. We can do as we did on our hunting trip and just “show up” with little to no preparation, but chances are we will be ill prepared to deal with the world and its insanity.
According to a major national survey, Americans are becoming less religious and increasingly turning away from the many denominations that once served as their spiritual homes. The percentage of people who do not claim a religious identity has nearly doubled since 1990, growing to 15% of Americans last year, researchers with the American Religious Identification Survey found.
Mainline Christian denominations, once bulwarks of the religious landscape, have suffered most from the drift. Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians are among the denominations that have seen their ranks decline.
Although 86% of Americans identified as Christians in 1990, just 76% said the same last year. Only 11 % of Americans read their bibles every day. More than half read it less than once a month or never at all. 18% of born-again Christians read their Bibles once a day, while 23% who professed to be Christians said they never read their bibles at all.
It isn’t that they don’t own a Bible; a recent survey indicates that the average American owns three copies of the Bible, but doesn’t read any of them. But bad as that may sound, America is more Bible literate than other countries:
Asked if they’d read a phrase from the Bible in the past 12 months, 75 percents of American respondents said yes, while between 20 percent and 38 percent of respondents in the other eight countries said yes.
The lowest were Spain with 20 percent, France with 21 percent, Italy with 27 percent, and Germany with 28 percent.
Results were similar when respondents were asked if they had read a book with a religious theme in the past 12 months. Fifty-eight percent of Americans said yes. Poland was second with 50 percent and the other countries came in between 22 and 35 percent.
It seems more in the world are heading down a path of destruction than to everlasting life. The Bible predicts that this will happen. I question why?
Matthew Henry explained it this way, (I slightly edited it for brevity’s sake):
There are but two ways right and wrong, good and evil; the way to heaven and the way to hell; in the one or other of these all are walking: there is no middle place. See, concerning the way of sin and sinners, that the gate is wide, and stands open. You may go in at this gate with all your lusts about you; it gives no check to appetites or passions. It is a broad way; there are many paths in it; there is choice of sinful ways. There is a large company in this way.
But what profit is there in being willing to go to hell with others, because they will not go to heaven with us?
The way to eternal life is narrow. We are not in heaven as soon as we go through the strait gate. Self must be denied, the body kept under, and corruptions affronted. Daily temptations must be resisted; duties must be done. We must watch in all things, and walk with care; and we must go through much tribulation.
And yet this way should invite us all; it leads to life: to present comfort in the favor of God, which is the life of the soul; to eternal bliss, the hope of which at the end of our way, should make all the difficulties of the road easy to us.
This plain declaration of Christ has been disregarded by many who have taken pains to explain it away; but in all ages the real disciple of Christ has been looked on as a singular, unfashionable character; and all that have sided with the greater number, have gone on in the broad road to destruction.
If we would serve God, we must be firm in our religion. Can we often hear of the strait gate and the narrow way, and how few there are that find it, without being in pain for ourselves, or considering whether we are entered on the narrow way, and what progress we are making in it?
Matt. 7:13
“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.”