Animals! Blaze is out wandering
around listening, sniffing and trying to see if there is anything he should be
barking at. He is getting better, both
in showing interest in his surroundings and not barking quite as much. He and the neighbor dog like to inquire if
the other is around and when he is carry on a ‘conversation.’ The deer get both excited.
Deed brought Josh’s duck decoy
bag over for Carla to repair. The
netting at the bottom – so water can drain out – is torn from the friction of
riding in the boat, dragging here and there - Carla is going to work on it.
Ozzie has decided that it was
brought in for her to use as a bed. Like
most cats, she is inquisitive and sniffed around it a bit, then decided, since
there weren’t any live ducks in it that it would make a nice bed.
CT scan came back with only
minor issues – just need to be aware of them and we will keep track as time goes
on.
Next few days will be busy ones,
lots of work still needs to be done and it takes a ‘bit’ longer to do them,
before winter greets us.
1 Timothy 1:12-14 And I thank Christ
Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me
into the ministry;
13 Who was before a
blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did
it ignorantly in unbelief.
14 And the grace of our
Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ
Jesus.
but I
obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in
unbelief.
As I
read this this morning, I couldn’t help but think that there are very few people
who cannot be reached for Christ.
Paul was genuinely concerned
that Jesus was a false teacher. He was
genuinely concerned that Christ followers be excommunicated from the faith if
they continued to preach the Gospel of Christ.
We have to remember that these
people were Jews. Most were faithful
attenders, even after they were converted, at the Synagogue on Sabbath Day. But they were telling others of this
‘upstart’ Jesus, that He was the Son of God, that He was the Christ, that He
arose from the grave, that the old methods of seeking forgiveness was no longer
necessary since Jesus’ death and resurrection took the place of any other
sacrifice – that He was equal to God, was God and that He was to be treated as
such.
To Paul and many sincere people,
who were not trying to protect their place in the hierarchy, but genuinely
concerned about this heresy – these people preaching Jesus were blasphemers and
the Jewish religion dealt harshly with people like this.
Paul, as we know, took great
pains to bring these people to ‘justice.’
To the point that after his acceptance of Christ the Christians didn’t
trust him for a long time. He had to
prove himself to them.
With Paul it took a meeting with
Jesus on the road to Damascus to come to the realization that Jesus was who He
said He is; he learned as the other Apostles learned, that Jesus was the Christ
and worthy of following.
All of us, at one time or
another, came up against a person who truly believed what they had been falsely
taught about Christ and, seemingly, would never change their minds. We may have witnessed to them often, to no
avail. We may even have given up on them
as they were so adamantly opposed to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
You, know, some of us may have
been one of these.
But God doesn’t give up on them,
and therefore, we should never give up on them.
We may not be able to talk with them about Christ – they cut us off and
won’t listen to us; sometimes our past gets in their way and they believe we are
just hypocrites.
Our history often gets in the
way of our witnessing. It is one of the
reasons we want to walk with Christ is His righteousness at all times. But we are human, we make mistakes, we sin
and we have hurt our testimony with some people. They have not yet, received the forgiveness
that Jesus gives so they do not understand how we can sin, yet be forgiven and
used of God to preach the Gospel.
Many times they just get tired
of us talking about what Christ does in our life and avoid us at all costs. We pray for them, try and reach them only to
be put off and rejected.
None of this matters; we are not
the only people in this person’s life.
While we sometimes think we are their only hope, it isn’t us that change
their hearts it is the Holy Spirit and He has many other soldiers out there that
He sends to reach out to sinners.
Where we might have failed to
convince them to listen to the Holy Spirit as He works on their conscience, and
ignore the knocking at the door of their heart by Jesus – someone else may be
able to reach them.
Sometimes it takes the
conversion of a close friend, sometimes it takes someone to demonstrate that
Christ lives within them and their actions speak the same as their words.
I have told the story before,
how one of my early mentors was a man who had fallen several times and had come
back to Christ each time. Others in the
congregation had been hurt by him, and they didn’t trust him. But, to me, he was a man who was living for
Christ, who had raised two strong young men – one of which, by the way went on
to be the head of Missions in the Foursquare Church. I didn’t know about the history until later
and when I did learn, both from him and others, it didn’t matter – he was my
mentor and I was learning a great deal from him.
While others didn’t trust him, I
did. He didn’t let the fact that he had
fallen keep him from helping me and forming a strong relationship.
People are out there that need
Christ; people that we see and talk with all the time. We don’t have to get on a soap box and preach
the Gospel to share the Gospel with them.
Our life should be an open book; we should be able to share the Gospel by
not only our words but how we conduct our lives.
We are going to encounter people
that hate God, that hate His Word and as a result hate us for being who we are
in Christ. Yet, we may be the very
person God is going to use to open their eyes and understand that Christ is real
and they need Him.
Testimonies abound of those that
have been imprisoned, tortured, their family tortured by someone(s) that were
doing so because they were “I
did it ignorantly in unbelief.” Later, because of their stand for Christ,
because they did not waver in their faith and witnessed and prayed for their
tormentors those oppressors came to know Christ.
Does it happen every time,
certainly not; for every conversion there was probably dozens, if not hundreds
that failed to find Christ; see His Love and Mercy and accept His
salvation? But that doesn’t change the
need for us to live for, and proclaim Him.
God places us in situations
where He wants us to show His Love, the Mercy He offers and the Salvation of
Christ. Sometimes we don’t realize how,
or even if, the Holy Spirit is working in their lives. But God knows and when we listen and obey Him
we can be that – or at least one of those – conduit(s) He is using to bring them
out of their unbelief.
Where ever we are God can use
us; we are there because God has something in mind for us – someone He wants to
hear the Gospel is close by. It
shouldn’t be our decision whether or not a person can come to Christ so we pick
and choose who we show that love go God to, based on our opinion of their
‘worth’ to God.
If God can use Paul, He can use
anyone – anyone – including us.
Later, Art :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment