Friday, March 27, 2020

Orange Moon Cafe "One"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"One"


      "For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous" (Romans 5:19).

      One man originally got us into our dilemma of sin, and one Man made possible our salvation from it.  We could venture down many doctrinal paths in consideration of this vital Biblical truth.  For now, however, let us simply consider its message of the significance of a solitary individual.

    "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?  Then said I, Here am I; send me" (Isaiah 6:8).

    Isaiah committed himself to a task the Lord told him would not be successful (Isaiah 6:9-10).  Israel would not respond to the prophet in repentance, which seems to indicate a call to futility.  In the immediate sense, this was the case.  However, the chronicle of this one faithful man speaks through the centuries in the pages of Scripture, and in the lives of believers.  Indeed, how many have responded to God's call to service with the affirmation voiced by Isaiah?  "Here am I; send me."  Yes, one man, whose devotion has affected millions.

    From the prophet we proceed to Dr. Suess, noted for beautifully stating the significance one person can play in the life of another: "In the world, you may be one person. But to one person, you may be the world."    This is especially true of believers, in whom dwells the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Who might He touch through us when we devote ourselves to God for the purpose of loving people as the expression of loving Him?  We do not know, and we may wonder how we could be of much help to others.  However, we are one person indwelt, led, and enabled by an infinite God.  We can thus be sure our Lord will not waste our realization of how much we can mean to others.  Through Christ, we might very well mean the world to someone, or rather, we might mean the Maker of the world to someone.

    A.W. Tozer once said of John 3:16, "To me, the passage simply means that everybody matters to God."  We do well to embrace such truth, setting forth in each new day with the consecration of "Here am I, send me."   We can thereby expect the Lord will lead us to someone for whom we will mean far more than we can imagine.  One person is all we are, but as God's sons and daughters, we are one person who serve as the heart, the hands, and the voice of the Person to whom everybody matters, and to whom He matters more than anything.

"And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched Me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with Him said, Master, the multitude throng Thee and press Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched Me?
(Luke 8:42-46)

Weekly Memory Verse
      "And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward another, and toward all." 
(I Thessalonians 3:12)
























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