I Kings 17:4 and 9 include interesting asides. In verse 4 God told Elijah, “I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.” In verse 9 he told Elijah, “I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”
We have no ability to explain God’s orders to his creatures. As merely one example, how does God empower monarch butterflies—the apparently most vulnerable of his winged creation—to fly thousands of miles South each Fall; then the same thousands of miles North each Spring? We have only marginal understanding of his sovereign will over humans. Especially when the widow in Zarephath didn’t seem to know God had commanded her I Kings 17:12. However, her initial response to Elijah’s request for food plus water may give a clue. Remember that the woman resided in an aggressively pagan culture. She may have been one of the moral persons in that fanatically immoral religion. That makes sense. Knowing her background, God would make it easy as possible to obey him. He therefore could have given her what to say when a Jewish prophet—always identified by bold visage, distinctive dress and mysterious spiritual presence—arrived and asked for a drink…then added, “and bring me, please, a piece of bread.” Notice the courtesy Elijah used, a sure evidence of God’s command. And…after allowing the widow the right to express her limitations, and her lingering doubt, hearing Elijah’s counsel “Don’t be afraid,” with the reason: God would provide removed any barrier to obedience. All of this could have happened, but not necessarily. Now…this has a lesson for our discipleship: God may not so clearly identify someone he wants us to help; but the Holy Spirit will bolster our confidence to do so by our faith that God wouldn’t send someone to us outside our disciple-depth or spiritual-giftedness. Therefore, while we may find excuses why we “can’t serve, can’t witness, can’t help,” we have one reason we should: God has prepared that person, that situation, that crisis for our testimony and labor. He makes no mistakes when bringing the spiritual need to the spiritual source. Will we rise to the opportunity to be Christ’s witness? God had a number of Old Testament believers who modeled the life he wanted in humans. Hebrews 11 highlighted many of them. But when he wanted his LIFE EMBODIED in human form, he sent Jesus. He alone, all by himself, perfected what God could do with a person devoted to him. In contrast, the combined efforts of all humans devoted to God have produced only partial, minute, infinitesimal results. All combined.
Jesus in himself, IN HIMSELF!, perfected all a human could be. Therefore, every believer has Jesus as his perfect Model. We want hm to: rebuke us when we disobey God; correct us when we’re wrong; teach us when we’re ignorant; discipline us when we’re belligerent; punish us when we’re refractory; and bless us when we obey. And always, to hold before us the vision Jesus Christ has for us:
Use whatever human discipline helps us get the gears of our life aligned. But be absolutely sure that the Holy Spirit alone empowers us to mesh those gears for God’s glory! In summary, Christians:
Then…when God calls us before him:
Too much material for messages previously preached accumulates as an excess of material I’ll file for future use. BUT…before I do, consider a summary of the series on SOUL/SPIRIT.
Christians can either rise to God’s expectations by letting his Image in us—our spirit—lead; or fall to the desires of the flesh by letting our soul—the life principal God built into every living creature—lead. Our spirit will always encourage us to RISE. Our soul, created to remember God, will be notoriously easy prey of far less. Our soul, then, can be either:
On her tombstone Bette Davis had inscribed: “I did it the hard way.” Professionally, yes. She challenged studio bosses when that hadn’t been previously successful. Personally, in lifestyle, no. She took the easy way, the natural way, the human way. For to live the “hard way” means:
And that “hard way” turns easy when we experience God’s promise to provide our needs—and to be there for us whatever, whenever. End Part I Christian generosity offers a result of conversion to Christ, not the reason we should be baptized into Christ. That reason has nothing to do with what Christians do for others. It has everything to do with God’s Love in Christ seeking, finding and restoring sinners to the Father in Heaven.
Consider how ruthlessly honest the apostle Paul stated our misery before Christ. We were:
And more references could be cited. Only if we admit we’re sinners, and want to be forgiven, do we receive forgiveness. Any less a response to God’s holiness exempts us from forgiveness and destines us to punishment. While many in Paul’s day knew they needed forgiveness, many more now consider themselves immune to sin instead of corrupted by it. Nevertheless, the Christian life is ALL ABOUT what God did for us then, and continues to do for us now. As unforgiven sinners we can never fellowship with God. But at our worst, no help in sight, God reached out to us in Christ, forgiving us if we trusted his sacrifice. When we stress that reality, all service rendered by us seems “the least we can do.” Jesus insists we become a different person, with the same personality our genes dictate. using whatever gifts the Holy Spirit bestowed. A quiet person need not become loud. A boisterous person need only watch that his trumpet keeps friends, not makes enemies. If we’re studious, STUDY. If we love people, MINGLE. Since we have a purpose, EMBODY it. Since we have a message, SHARE it. Our spiritual enfranchisement, then, empowers a discipleship that:
Is our service being equal to our privilege? Fini NOTE: what was 2 parts is now 3.
A U Tube Old Pictures showed an English beggar running alongside a slow-moving carriage:
It’s possible to have the ability to help a person, but ignore it by:
As the Master’s Parable of the Good Samaritan proved, Luke 10:25-37, even religious people can make excuses why they don’t help others. A Levite, in charge of the sacred temple vessels, and a priest, in charge of sacred offerings on the altar, both glanced and moved aside to ignore a wounded man. But for every uncaring Christian, God has scores and hundreds anxious to help, able to help AND, HELPING. IDES and Samaritan’s Purse are but two of other organizations ministering in time of crisis, disaster and sickness. However, Christian generosity in time of need isn’t the reason unbelievers should accept Christ. End Part II Jesus met a man “covered with leprosy” Luke 5:12-16. Because Jesus had in equilibrium both POWER and COMPASSION to act, he touched the diseased flesh and his Deity removed the disease.
A priest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral met a man who had suffered 16 surgeries in 6 years in a leprosarium seeking to rebuild his body. His release nevertheless found him such an unwelcome addition to any family gathering that he used it as an excuse to become homeless. That priest befriended the man and invited him to dinner in a restaurant. There, because the man couldn’t, the priest unobtrusively cut the man’s meat for him. When installed as Bishop of Rochester, New York priest, now Bishop Fulton Sheen, reserved a seat for the man at the ceremony. He stopped to greet the man on his recessional. That man found in Sheen a Christian who did all he could to help a man be comfortable within the condition disease and surgery imposed. Sheen couldn’t eliminate the leprosy, because he couldn’t. Jesus did eliminate it, wherever he confronted it, because HE COULD. That’s the difference between being a vessel of clay holding God’s Treasure and God’s Son embodying the Treasure. Nor would the Bishop DO NOTHING because he couldn’t help every man disfigured by disease. He did what he could for one man he encountered. Sometimes our humanity, coupled with a person’s condition, limit ALL we would do if we could. Like Bishop Sheen, the most we can is to help the person find in God the courage to live productively despite his infirmity. That empowerment offers no small benefit. Sometimes we find ourselves wasting energy wishing we DID have something we DON’T; or wishing we DIDN’T that we DO. What ancestry bequeaths us through genetics can imprison us inside the someone we’d rather not be. In accepting it, however, and getting on with life, despite it, we find ourselves at peace with God, his presence guarding our life, his grace sufficient in our need. As a result, by being found in Christ, whom to know is to have eternal life, John 17:3, we forget our limitations, our weaknesses, and our own lives also. He increases as we decrease, and that decrease is our glory. For in him we delight in our weaknesses since his strength makes us strong II Corinthians 12:10. End Part I No doubt exists that cycles of heat and cold have occurred in earth’s past. Perhaps human activity, and burgeoning population world-wide, have interfered with the cycle. And perhaps the mounting evidence of climate change is altering regular weather patterns and introducing threatening changes on earth.
Even IF true…and I’m a student of God’s word, not of climate…EVEN IF true…the new, dangerous change in climate that augurs evil for agriculture, air pollution and unaccustomed climate change for all, PORTENDS HOPE in the Christian. God in his wisdom created all that would support human life on earth so long as human life existed. We can be sure, then, that what all humans need, while inhabiting earth, will be provided. GOD is not caught by surprise by earth’s events. Nor is his initial creation short of what’s needed to sustain life until he has no need of it. In addition, should something necessary to continue human existence:
THAT very fact may well indicate that we are closer to the end of history than ever before. That Christ’s Return from Heaven is closer than ever before. That our redemption draws closer than ever before. Unbelievers may fear, then, all that’s happening; Christians instead rejoice. Unbelievers may regret the mess humans have made of Earth. Christians rejoice in the coming Kingdom of God that no human touch has marred or even shall. In a sentence, break-up conditions in society offer Christians their optimum opportunity to:
Mark 3:13-18 joins a host of other Bible texts that teach significant kingdom of God truth in very short order. A few samples: The Creation in three chapters; the entire Mosaic tradition in 10 Commandments; four slim volumes that reveal the Glory of Jesus Christ in simple words what no words at all can hardly express. One slender volume that details the spread of Christianity from one Israelite city to the major cities of the Empire, even to Rome itself.
The first feature of that brevity was, Jesus recruited the Twelve to watch him at work. The second, that he sent them out to preach a message that surprised everyone: Christ crucified to offer God’s forgiveness of sin; resurrected from death to declare his sacrifice had achieved God’s purpose. It all seemed foolishness to the unconverted, but to “those whom God has called…the power of God and the wisdom of God” I Corinthians 1:21-25. That message of Christ, preached in the Spirit of Christ, still wins the unsaved to forgiveness and builds the saved into re-producing witnesses. The third, “and to have authority to drive out demons.” They replicated Christ’s very own presence in their preaching tours: sovereign over demons, sickness, disease, broken and shrunken limbs and death. Demon-possession poses no significant risk where the Gospel has been sovereign in human life. But Satan’s venomous nature still expresses hatred of Christ by seeking to weaken the Gospel message from God’s Power to human pleasure. Any compromise with Gospel teaching diminishes the church’s witness. As a result, churches lose incentive, growth and outreach. Not because the Gospel is now less effective, but we are less sufficient in trusting it to achieve God’s purpose. Thus, relying on our failed methods, we find God’s judgment active against the church today: more public than ever before, with less spiritual potency. Meeting in million dollar buildings while preaching a cheap gospel that makes people comfortable. Chasing ever-larger numbers while seeing ever-fewer convictions and conversions. Fini |
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