BE PREPARED
A timely reminder is surely not out of line, as I watch and pray and wrestle against spiritual wickedness on high. At times I even find myself needing to be sternly reminded what it is I am to be prepared for!
Let me use a story from our lives as an example of what I mean.
Jesus made it clear that the "work of the ministry" is when you are reaching out in the love of Christ to one in need. Sharing His precious words of life to encourage others. Sharing tangible things like food, drink and clothing. Praying for those in need is a wonderful and powerful action, but providing for those needs is what James was addressing in James 2:16 when he told us
"If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled' but you do not give them the things that are needed for the body, what does it profit?"
What good is it to have good intentions but to take no useful action? But even so, in taking useful action, are we PREPARED to follow through? Which brings us to the story.....
We met a young man while out walking the dog. (Even JackDog is useful in ministry!) After greetings and salutations, we invited him to our Thursday evening Praise & Prayer service. A couple of weeks later, he did come; and enjoyed himself. As we were breaking up it became evident (once in a while we do manage to LISTEN when the Spirit speaks!) that this young man had no where to live. Since the Lord put us in a house a year ago, our Missionary Mobile was parked, empty, in the back.
We insisted he stay in the RV while he looked for work and a place to live.
We clothed him, fed him, and met all his needs.
And the time dragged on. Past a few days. Past a few weeks. Past a few months.
He was indeed seeking work, but not finding any. Turns out he had a disability that made his employment possibilities extremely limited coupled with already limited employment opportunities in this area.
As the time stretched out, we discovered that so was our patience and kindness feeling very stretched. (Quit gasping in disbelief and admit, we are all human and must deal with the reality of our "feelings"!)
And grapple with our feelings we did! We kept reminding ourselves that nothing we had was ours, but all came from the Lord.
But we further discovered that as months passed and headed toward a year, even these reminders began to wear thin. We prayed for strength and patience and the ability to be obedient to the Lord and gracious to this young man. We made another discovery as a result. In numerous ways, as often as we needed, God strengthened us.
For some people, this may not have posed any struggle to them at all. Their personality and character make up might fit naturally with this up close and personal "giving" of oneself. For others, like we found in ourselves, it became a struggle to "die daily" to ourselves and the infringement on our privacy. Daily, we had to choose to live for the Lord in this area, doing His will and not our own. In its way, this became our suffering for Christ. Dieing to our desire for privacy in this area produced far greater than our suffering. It produced GLORY to the Lord, and that is the end product we strive for. Glorifying the Lord our God, who is worthy of all praise and glory.
Talking about biblical principle and living out biblical principle are two very distinctly different animals. You can talk all day. You can preach til you are blue in the face. Living it out, where the rubber meets the road, there is where you discover the truth found in Romans 12:1! Actually living out your daily life as living sacrifices brings great blessing! We discovered that as we gained our victory through Christ we also bore worthy FRUIT to the glory of God the Father.
It isn't easy or pleasant by any means, and it's never fun to admit that you aren't quite as loving and giving as you'd like to believe you are! Daily life can be a real struggle and its much harder, I think, to pretend it isn't. By admitting our need for the strength only the Spirit can provide and crying out to the Lord for the help we desperately need we become much more beneficial to the Body of Christ as we walk more fully by the Spirit and not by our sight or strength. In ourselves, we really aren't PREPARED to see this Christian life through to the end, but through Christ, we can and will succeed!
Happy "daily self death" to all, and to all the JOY of the Lord be your strength!
p.s.
Thanks to my "little brother" for inspiring this post!
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