We went to a birthday party today at ‘John’s Incredible Pizza’ today.

It’s an interesting place. Chuckee Cheese has much cheaper games but they don’t have a pizza buffet so John’s wins as far as I’m concerned.

While we were eating, I was thinking about what I like most about buffets and decided it’s that you can get food and just eat the bits you like. I don’t like pizza crust, so I pretty much just eat the topping off the top along with a little of the base. When you get a pizza at a normal restaurant or at home, it seems an incredible waste to leave all that crust but when you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, eating your favorite bits and throwing the rest away is easy.

Maybe that’s the difference between the church in the west and the persecuted church. Here in the west, we are free to have all we want. We can feast on the bible, on fellowship, on worship, on prayer and on all the other areas of spirituality. In other words, we have an all-you-can-eat buffet of spirituality and what do we do? We take just the bits we like most and throw the rest away.

People who don’t have the ‘buffet’ that we have take what they can get and yearn after more.

Is it any wonder that the church is in such a sorry state in the western world?

We need to change our thinking and learn to be grateful for everything that God gives even when we have such an abundance.

It’s hard to yearn for something that is freely available but learning to yearn for everything that being a Christian means and to not cherry-pick our favorite bits is essential if we are to become effective witnesses for Christ.