"Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." (vs. 42).

That is what is wrong with many of us today ”we have quit watching. Rather than living on tip-toe in an atmosphere of expectancy we are drowning in pessimism and despair. Even many devout Christians are prone to operate from fear rather than faith. That is why churches are faltering today. We are afraid. We have no faith.

How different we are from those earlier followers of our Lord. It was far more difficult for them to be Christians than it is for us. There was only a handful of them and the staggering might of the whole Roman empire was aligned against them, yet they believed. They believed that God was with them. They believed that there was nothing that they could not do in the power of his might.

The…