“It’s finally Friday, I’m free again. I’ve got my motor running for a wild weekend. It’s finally Friday, I’m out of control. Forget the working blues and let the good times roll.” This afternoon, like every Friday afternoon, at 5 o’clock that song will be heard from almost every country music station around the nation because it represents how most people in our world view the end of each week. It’s a time to cut loose, let our hair down, and rest from a hard week on the job. In other words it’s party time. Ignore responsibility, have a few drinks, make a few mistakes.
We tend to spend the end of the week looking backward, using it to recover from what we just did. And I obviously can’t argue with the desire for innocent relaxation. But a lot of the trouble many worldly minded people tend to get into on the weekends might be because they spend their time looking backward. But as the week comes to an end maybe we would do better to spend less time looking backward to the week just completed and more time looking forward to what the next week will hold, particularly the first day of that week. Maybe we would do well to spend some time preparing for how we will begin the next.
So today, as we wind down and get ready to relax and recover from the past week let’s start thinking about Sunday and what we can do to prepare to make it a more meaningful day than it otherwise may be:
- As the week comes to an end let’s spend the weekend being the type of person that people imagine us to be in church on Sunday. It is amazing the things some people willingly, knowingly, and purposefully do on Friday and Saturday night and yet sit in a pew on Sunday morning like they are the model Christian (James 1:8). Yet people in the community see, know of, and detest their hypocrisy and associate that hypocrisy with the church they attend. Instead, would it not be far wiser to actually model Christianity in the way that we should. Rejecting the party mentality that is so often associated with weekend and spend that time displaying righteousness to those around us. By doing that we prepare ourselves for eternity, but at the same time display a clear and consistent example of what Christianity is supposed to be all about. Remember that in far too many cases our lives will be the only sermon that a lot of people will ever hear, and even if isn’t the only one then it will most definitely be the first.
- As the week comes to an end let’s drink deeply from the well of God’s grace and sober our minds to what life is all about. Weekends have become synonymous with drinking. Drive by any bar at any point of the week and you’ll see a few cars here or there. Drive past the same bars any Friday or Saturday night and the parking lots will be full. People associate the weekend with drinking and intoxication. But what if we entered each weekend committed to drinking, yes, but drinking only from that fountain of living water that Jesus spoke of in John 4. A fountain of living water that gives us access to the grace of God which bestows eternal life. But this type of drinking will not produce intoxication. Instead it will sober our minds to our real purpose in life. That purpose is far beyond fun, pleasure, and release. That purpose is about total surrender to the One who can help us escape all of the cares and concerns this life has to offer and deliver us to heaven.
- As the week comes to an end let’s be reminded of what the first day of the week represents. When the two Mary’s made their way to Jesus’s tomb they felt confident in what they would find. They came with sweet spices to anoint His body and prepare it for continued interment (Mark 16:1). But when they got there they were surprised because what they went to find was no longer there. Jesus had risen, and throughout the New Testament the message of that resurrection on the first day of the week has been of the fresh hope available to man because of Jesus. That’s what we should be looking to at the end of each week. Not just the release that comes from the end of the work week, but the hope that each first day of the week brings.
It’s Friday. Another week has come and gone. But there’s another one on its way. What are we going to do with it?