15 Nov Flexi Time – Yes ! Flexi Life- No!

Can I make Monday as my Sabbath as I have to go to office every Sunday for a build release?

Can I skip Sunday Church Worship Service since I have coaching classes, I m sure God won’t mind

Can I miss my early morning devotion since I am a late riser, but I am sure I will do it before I go to sleep.

Can we have prayer over WhatsApp call as we all are pressed for time.

I will give the morning Church Worship Service a miss and attend EGF in the evening, after all its all about meeting?

Can we meet only for ICEU event and programmes as every week cell fellowship is too much of a drag.

Well if your answer to all these “Can I” questions a NO, then you are not flexible person out of step with the current “FLEXI” generation, where everything from Vodafone recharge to EMI payments is flexible.

And if you go further and quote verses like:

Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Exodus 20:8
Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, Hebrews 10:25
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. Mathew 18:20
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Mathew 4:4
. . . etc. etc. then, you are for sure to be branded “Old school, legalistic, fundamentalist, insensitive, crazy in the books of many.
So before we ask “HOW should we”, a well thought out answer should be given to the question “SHOULD WE OR NOT” being the concept of FLEX

TIME into our spiritual lives that our companies adapt so well.

FLEX TIME: “SHOULD WE OR NOT”

Imagine in an EGF fellowship, Siddharth starts with his stand on that question:
Siddharth: As for me, I would say ‘No’. We should not have flexibility with regards to all areas of life. There are certain principles, boundaries, disciplines that for good reason are not flexible. There are absolutes and not relative!

G.K. Chesterton says “Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask yourself, ‘Why was it put there in the first place?'”

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. Psalm 16:6

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3

I draw my interpretation that just like boundary lines & foundations cannot be flexible, it has to be definite. Imagine a house with flexible foundations or a boundary line which can be extended as per the changing seasons. Similarly it is in a disciplined Christian life

So here what I draw my point to, there are certain negotiable and non negotiables in general which can be drawn for Christendom and for all Christians. There is no flexibility in that.

Now Naresh joins in the discussion rather more animatedly:

Naresh : How can you throw a general blanket cover principle to all lifestyles?

Sidharth: But does not the Bible do the same when . . .

Preeti (interrupting): “How insensitive” of God oops I mean how sensitive of you Siddharth to quote the Bible now, don’t you realise you are acting too rigid here?

Madhusmitha: Well, I have an idea, why don’t we come together to the drawing table and frame the negotiables and non negotiables in the life of a student and the life of a working graduate.

They all nod their head in unison and start . . .

. . and the discussion continues . . .

Binu Thomas is staff worker of UESI Odisha based in Bhubaneshwar

TIME IN GOD’s HANDS
Ecclesiastes 3:1 – There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, recently created the world’s most accurate clock. Called an “optical atomic clock,” it’s made of an oscillating laser, a mechanism called a “comb” that counts oscillations, with a single mercury atom as the point of reference.

The optical atomic clock “ticks” one quadrillion times per second. Research is ongoing, but this type of clock could be up to one thousand times more accurate than current atomic clocks. Such precise timekeeping might be applied in navigation, communication technology, and deep space exploration.

Time, no matter how it’s measured, is one of the inescapable realities of life. God ordained seasons in nature; He built them into the rhythm of life. There are seasons in our lives as well, and in God’s plan for history (cf. Dan. 2:21; Titus 1:2–3; 1 Peter 1:3–5).

courtesy: http://www.preceptaustin.org/ecclesiastes_illustrations_