The title of this blog post is a line from the movie "Shawshank Redemption". It's a story about an innocent man, Andy Dufresne, who goes to prison for a murder he didn't commit. After spending nearly two decades behind bars for this, he finally reaches a breaking point when he realizes that he has a decision to make. "Get busy living, or get busy dying" he utters to his friend. The interesting thing is that he utters this line right after the friend (Red was his name) tells him that he needs to forget having hope of ever getting out from behind bars. The high point of this movie is near the end when after uttering this line, Andy decides that he will get busy living. He breaks out of the prison and gets to live the life he wanted to all along.

How often life emulates art. And even more so in the church. I believe that we are living in times right now where if we don't make a decision one way or the other, the church may never become what it can become. In short, the church needs to get busy living or get busy dying.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm in the group that wants to see the church get busy living.

We have so many people that go to church Sunday after Sunday, hear a sermon, sing some songs and then go home. Many of them have good intentions but once again, nothing much ever comes out of them. Primarily because most of what our lives are about are words. We can talk about things with the best of them.

We talk politics. We are very quick to blame the "other" side for the country's problems and are quick to point out all of the mistakes, but at the end of the day, we go to bed and leave our words suspended in the air to die a lonely death.

We talk religion. Frankly, I can't stand modern "religion". But we talk about it nonetheless. We talk about how if the "traditional" fogies would just get out of the dark ages, then everything would be fine. Or if all of them "contemporary" wacko's would forget all their fancy smancy stuff, then we could finally get back to the truth. But once again, words and opinions are like......well, you know what they are like...everyone has one and they usually stink.

Let's get back to our movie for a moment. Suppose Andy had simply uttered the words "get busy living or get busy dying" and then wandered back to his cell content to live life out in the prison cell that unjustly held him captive. That wouldn't have made much for a compelling movie ending. No, the ending that needed to happen, was that he needed to "get busy living".  He made the choice, TOOK ACTION and look at the results.

So then why are we so caught up in thinking our words are actually going to make a difference? I realize that the popular (albeit unBiblical) teaching is that our words are what determines our destiny and maybe that is why people are so busy to use a lot of words.  But I think it is quite apparent that our words are not as powerful as we think they are. It is our ACTIONS that determine whether something happens or not.

God very easily could have said "Everyone of those people on earth are lost and going to hell unless they have a Savior. Somebody really should do something about that". But He didn't do that. No, God actually TOOK ACTION. He send His only Son to die for each and every one of us so that we could be forgiven of our sins if we accepted the gift.

What I find amazing out this situation is...of all the beings in the universe whose Words can actually DO something, God still chose to actually DO something rather than simply speak something. God could have spoke our Salvation into existence. He could have spoke a perfect sacrifice into existence to pay for our sins. But again, He didn't. He actually DID something about our lost state. And because of GODS ACTION, we can now be reconciled with the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus.

So what will you do? Will you continue to wake up every day and simply talk about all the problems of this country and world? Will you gripe and complain about how things are and how something really needs to be done about it?

Or, will you actually take action and DO something about it.

Will you help the church to get busy living, or will you stand back and watch it die?