A Warning To Christian Workers

ELI AND HIS SONSA Warning To Christian Workers“But they hearkened not to the voice of their father (Eli) ... His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not” (1 Samuel 2:25; 3:13). Are some of us too busy in God’s work to do the things we should be doing? I am not only a Christian worker, but I am also a Christian father and husband. Some of the breakdowns in Christian homes - between husbands and wives, parents and children - are due to the fact that we do not realize our responsibility. It was because Eli was too busy doing the work of God that his sons grew up to be a disgrace to his own home. Not only was there no instruction in this home, but there was no influence either. His sons did not know the Lord, and they did not know their own father. Isn’t there a warning here to some of us who are engaged in Christian work? We are right in the thick of the Lord’s service. We love it and we are up to our ears in it. How are our children growing up? Do they know us? Are we fulfilling our responsibility to teach them, or are we leaving that to Sunday School teachers or to someone else? The second thing concerning this man was the lack of spirituality that ruined his work. Behind the trouble in his home lay trouble in his own heart. Here was a man so busy looking out for others that he wasn’t looking out for himself. In Song of Songs 1:6 we read, “They made me keeper of the vineyards; mine own vineyard have I not kept.” I think of a gardener who spent all of his time keeping other people’s gardens tidy, but his own was a mess! He had no time to cut the grass, weed the beds or prune the roses. The gardener’s plot was the most untidy on the whole street. This was Eli. It should not be us. Author Unknown