We have to take our life of faith outside the church. We have to begin living the life in front of those that are lost. We cannot confine our converstaions to only talking about faith with other Chrsitians. We cannot limit our praise to the church building, or our worship between the hours of 10 and 11. We must let our light shine before all men. We must be that city on a hill. We must set our lamp upon the stand so that all can see. This means that every day must be lived out in a constant state of awareness of God and his His will for your life at that moment. God may desire to use you to evangelize, or minister to someone's need on your own, without a large group of "church people". Christianity is a personal faith, not a group mentality. We must always be ready and willing to obey his voice, and do the work of the ministry.
Most of us acknowledge this, and would even "Amen" such a statement, and yet we do not live it out. So the question is why? There are as many reasons as there are people, but I believe all of those reasons boil down to one factor; we have not fully surrendered to God. We are still too focused on self. We are too SELFconscious. When we were lost we didn't seem to care who saw us make fools of ourselves. But, now that we are saved we act as if we are ashamed. And the world has taken advantage of this selfconscious attitude to bully Christians into submission and silence. This is the reason we choose to live out our in the safety of the church. However if we are going to impact the world around us we have got to start living this life 24/7. We are going to have to begin to praise him outside of the church building. We are going to have to start worshiping him every moment of every day, no matter where we are or who we are around, and regardless of whether or not the rest of the church is involved. The 24 hours starts now, get started and live for him.
