“More Blessed To Give"

"More Blessed To Give"

     Genuine service to God and people involves Christ-enabled devotion, effort, concentration, determination, and self sacrificial action.  However, the sensibility of one who ministers involves the sense of receiving while giving.

    "In the meanwhile, His disciples prayed Him, saying, Master, eat. But He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?  Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work" (John 4:31-34).

   Recall that this episode with the disciples occurred as a weary Lord Jesus sought rest upon a well, only to find opportunity to minister the Truth of God to a Samaritan woman (John 4:1-30).   He led the woman to faith during the encounter, and many others of her people believed when they also came to hear Him.  The Lord Himself was invigorated by the spiritual meal of which He partook in communicating with the woman, revealing again that genuine labors for God proceed from God.  Thereby we feel ourselves to be as blessed or more blessed than those to whom we minister.  "Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in His ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee" (Psalm 128:1-2).

    That which we do for God and others begins with Him, and is empowered by Him.  "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might" (Ephesians 6:10).  Again, we will feel the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical challenges that accompany the diligence we devote to ministry, in whatever form.  The joy and peace of Christ in His love, however, fills us with the sense of receiving grace in the very midst of bestowing it.  Our Heavenly Father privileges us to serve for His glory and the blessing of others.  He also empowers us and thereby causes us to realize that the best reception of blessedness occurs as we confer it to others.  The Lord Jesus taught and exemplified such blessed truth long ago, and He now dwells within us by His Spirit to constitute His joy as our joy…

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."

(Acts 20:35)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."

 (Hebrews 13:3).

     

 

"Home"

"Home"

     As Western culture spiritually and morally descends into darkness, many born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ feel the anguish of seeming like strangers in their own countries.  The disturbance is to be expected, and is also proper because we know the destruction that results when the masses reject the Truth of God and ignore the Biblical mandate to "remove not the ancient landmark" (Proverbs 22:28).

    "When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn" (Proverbs 29:2).

    "Destruction and misery are in their ways" (Romans 3:16).

    An advantage exists, however, in this cultural flight from reality.  Believers are always "strangers and pilgrims" in this present world (Hebrews 11:13).  Regardless of the condition of our native earthly land, the earth as it now stands is not and cannot be our truest home.  You may recall the story of the couple returning home to America from the mission field in the early 20th century.  They sailed on the same ship as President Theodore Roosevelt as he returned from a two week hunting expedition in Africa.  Bands played and huge crowds gathered to welcome the President's arrival.  The missionary couple returned home to no such greeting.  "Sweetheart", the missionary said sadly to his wife, "the President comes home to a great celebration after a few weeks of recreation.  We spent 30 years of labor for God's glory and the salvation of lost souls.  But we return home to no one."  The man's wife, without hesitation, looked into her husband's eyes.  "But darling," she  responded with a smile, "we're not home."

    The condition of culture rightly grieves and disturbs us.  But we must not let it distract, deceive, and discourage us.  In the best of times and of nations, we are not home.   In the worst, we are not home.  Eternal beings united to the infinite God could never rest comfortably in a realm that "passeth away" (I John 2:17).  Thus, as we see the fulfillment of His Word regarding a spiritually and morally dissolving world, we choose to rejoice in Truth even as we mourn the sad dissolution.  We are not home.  But one day we will journey there, not to receive accolades and fanfare for ourselves, but to joyfully bestow them on Another…

"And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever."

(Revelation 5:11-14)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."

 (Hebrews 13:3).

     

  

"Not Yet"

"Not Yet"

     No less than John the Baptist - of whom the Lord Jesus Christ declared that "there hath not arisen a greater" - suffered a crisis of confidence when the Savior did not fulfill John's expected role as conquering deliverer of Israel from the yoke of her oppressors (Matthew 11:11).

    "Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto Him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" (Matthew 11:2-3).

    Note the venue from which John wrote.  He never expected that a prison term would result from the coming of the Messiah, a prison wherein the Baptist eventually died in martyrdom.  Thus, he was tempted to question the identity of the One whom he once pronounced "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).  God's purposes paved a different and difficult path for the Lord Jesus and for John, a path that led to their death rather than the open manifestation of triumph.

   Such a day of victory will come, of course.  As with many of the Jews who awaited their Messiah, John did not see the necessary redeeming work of the Lord Jesus first revealed in humility rather than power.  "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28).  John failed to realize the significance of his own announcement and pronouncement regarding the Lord Jesus as "the Lamb of God".  He rather expected "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" to come and to conquer the earthly enemies of God and His people (Revelation 5:5).  Surely Christ will come in the fulfillment of that office.  But not in John's day, and not yet in our own.

   Presently, the Lord Jesus will often work in our lives as the Lamb rather than the Lion.  Hardships, injustices, and bewildering "prisons" will abide in our lives, regardless of how diligently we pray and affirm Christ for who He is.  Recall the Apostle Paul's thorn in the flesh, which God could have removed by a mere syllable of utterance from the mouth of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.  The thorn remained as the Lamb of God beckoned Paul to walk in His path of suffering for the glory of God and ministry to others.  "My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" declared the Lamb.  2,000 years later, the light of God still flows from the Apostle's lingering wound (II Corinthians 12:9).  Paul prayed for the greatness of the Lion.  He received the grace of the Lamb.

    Sometimes the Lion, often the Lamb.  We ignore much of the New Testament's clear teaching if we fail to realize that the coming day of Christ's openly revealed triumph is not this day.  This day rather calls us to know our Lord in both the splendor of His greatness, and the sufficiency of His grace.  We rejoice when He rescues us from prisons.  And we must rejoice when He rescues us in our prisons.  "Art Thou He that should come?"  Long ago, faithful John asked the question from a place wherein he never expected to find himself.  We may be tempted similarly, but let us realize that we have an advantage our brother of old did not possess.  We have a New Testament that fully reveals the Lamb and the Lion.  We know that a path of both blessedness and buffeting awaits us as we walk with the Lord Jesus.  A day comes when the buffeting will dissolve and "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain" (Revelation 21:4).  This is not that day.  Let us not expect it to be, and let us rather anticipate that "He that should come" is He that has come to deliver us with both grace and greatness.  

"It is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

(Romans 8:36-37)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."

 (Hebrews 13:3).