This is something we really have to consider at the present time. You can go to new churches in different places and this is especially true in the USA, and you go in and they are not like churches at all, not like preaching centres for the word of God, and for the gathering of God's people. They are more like theatres with huge platforms and lights as in a theatre. They are nothing like churches, but altogether like entertainment auditoriums, and that is how they are designed and built, because that is what is going to happen in them.
But we can be guilty of this too. I remember some years ago hearing a Sunday school anniversary address, and the person who gave it was sound in the faith, but he didn't use Scripture at all, apart from to announce the text which he promptly fled from. Instead he told a story, and it took the whole 20 to 25 minutes to work this story out. It was a good story; it was very interesting; it had everybody, adults and children alike, on the edge of their seats, and it led to some kind of gospel application, but it wasn't Scripture; it wasn't from the Bible. It wasn’t a message based upon the word of God. Why not? Well, the speaker, good man, but in his thinking he believed he could improve on the Bible. There was something more exciting than Scripture; a story would serve much better. And the adults there who were all Bible believers were charmed and delighted. We should be careful what we hear, and what we approve. It wasn't the gospel as presented through the pages of the word of God; it was something else. Even in sound circles, we can drift in this direction and think something else is needed. God cannot do his work, and the means and the tools, the instruments he has provided, are not good enough.
It is the same with our commitment. What is exhorted in the Scripture? What are we to do? We are to be dedicated to the Lord; we are to have priorities; we are to seek to serve him and witness to him, to be available to him, to lay down our lives for him. I remember some years ago being in Malaysia and I was shown a European graveyard there. And it was pointed out to me how you tell the tombstones of European missionaries: this was a European missionary, and this one, and this one. You looked at them, and you realised that these were young men and women dying at 22 and 23 and 24. Of course, because when European missionaries went far from home, it was their expectation that they may not survive more than two or three years with the diseases that they were unaccustomed to, but now it is so different. ‘Would you do such and such a thing for the Lord?’ ‘Well, if it is convenient, I will; if it is congenial; if it fits with my arrangements I will think about it, otherwise not.’ How different! The carnal spirit comes into us; the things of this world so much more important to us than the things of God.