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Charity
suffereth long and is kind.
1Cor13:4 For many people who experience the Lord and come into a personal relationship with God, they are put in messy situations. Their spouse, their children, their friends and family may not be Christian and may be very much driven by the world and the flesh. When this is the case they embark on a life long journey of trying to win their lost loved ones and they spend a great deal of their prayer life in intercession hoping to witness conversion and change in the lives of those whom God has placed in their path. For others within a few short years they see their call to ministry and they go to bible school to become pastors, teachers, and evangelists. They devote their lives to saving the lost whether it be in prison ministry, establishing a church, teaching Sunday school, becoming a traveling evangelist, or writing books or selling Christian music which they receive from the Spirit. So whether it be personal ministry or public ministry the focus shifts from self growth to caring for the needs of others. If the person loses his perspective by becoming overly concerned with the needs of others, his own flaws and weaknesses may come to cause significant damage by not being dealt with. We see for instance ministers who succumb to sexual lust, material lust, ego inflation, marketing techniques, business administration, Christianity as religion, and Christianity appealing to the flesh as examples of a people who have not attained God's personal goals for their own lives. In short, they have not worked out their own salvation even though the initial response to their experience of God was a noble one. The love chapter so often quoted at weddings speaks of things that our human nature alone cannot perform. Even if we have gifts like faith, knowledge, prophesy, even if we have courage to give all we possess away or throw our bodies into the fire, without love, it means nothing. Unless our nature is changed, unless we have crucified the flesh, unless we become the finished product, someone like Jesus, we should not make others the overriding focus of our lives. We must love our neighbor as our self and we must not lose the master passion to become like Christ. It is a human tendency to want to be big. Big church, big following, big popularity, big insight. All of which means we are moving down the broad path and not the narrow one. If we are true to God he will keep us little so that we may always preach the truth regardless of how few accept the message. For the most part, the crowds that followed Jesus had their bellies filled and the sicknesses removed. Those who engaged in intellectual debate, those who were baffled by his sermons, those who felt personal injury in his teachings, were those who did not follow him. Many left him and many hated him. Many were jealous of him. Even those who followed him abandoned him at the cross. So being a finished product is not what we would normally expect. It does not necessarily mean popularity. It does not necessarily mean riches and fame. That for me is the gospel and that for me is the truth. Desire to become the finished product. Desire to become like Jesus and the outcome will be favorable in the end even if we are not successful in the eyes of the world. amen |