“Back in the day, we sang from hymnals in church, and everybody wore their Sunday morning best to church. Anybody and everybody could sing in the choir, and we didn’t have all those high-falootin big screens and text-to-give nonsense. Yep, God moved back in the day. And candy bars were a nickel, too. Those were the good old days.”
If you’ve lived long enough, you have a “back in the day” when things were done differently. The Pharisees lived every day stuck in their “back in the day”, and most missed the new life Jesus introduced. “The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’” They accused Jesus of forsaking the Jewish “back in the day” tradition. Yet Jesus desired to give them a new day so much better than they had ever known.
We think we know how church should be today—up to our specifications—the way it used to be. Look around you. Young families are flooding through our church doors. People are giving their hearts and lives to Jesus. Lives and futures are made new every day by God’s power. Yes, growing churches look much differently today than they did twenty-five or fifty years ago. And that’s a good thing! Don’t sit in church with a judgmental scowl on your face. Don’t miss what God is doing today and what He desires to do in your life. Join the living!
In a few years, should the Lord tarry His second coming to earth, today will be the “back in the day” for our young people.
“Father, forgive me for all my wrong thinking and speaking. I want to move into the middle of the activity of God in my church and in our world today. I trust you, Lord, and I thank you.”
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV).
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24 KJV).