The Well
The Well |
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Connecting Hope to the Hurting | |
Wednesday
February 20, 2008
Now let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached
to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is built on
this wonderful message. And it is this Good News that saves you if you firmly
believe it—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the
first place.
I passed on to you what was most important and what had also
been passed on to me—that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.
He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the
Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After
that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most
of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. Then he was seen by James
and later by all the apostles. Last of all, I saw him, too, long after the
others, as though I had been born at the wrong time. For I am the least of all
the apostles, and I am not worthy to be called an apostle after the way I
persecuted the church of God.
But whatever I am now, it is all because God
poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. For I have worked
harder than all the other apostles, yet it was not I but God who was working
through me by his grace. So it makes no difference whether I preach or they
preach. The important thing is that you believed what we preached to you.
1
Corinthians 15:1-11
Paul spent his entire life sharing the story of Jesus Christ ¾ the Good News. The first part of his life was spent being religious. However, once he encountered the one and only true God in the form of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus he was never the same.
Once we have experienced Jesus Christ up close and personal nothing is ever the same. When we do wrong ¾ we know it. When we don't love as we should ¾ we know it. We can't hide anything. Oh, don't get me wrong there will always be issues we need to deal with, but God saves them for us to deal with at a specific time ¾ that is God's mercy.
For years I stayed angry at God and man because I knew, I mean I KNEW there was a call on my life and that I wasn't walking in it. I blamed preachers, family members, and even friends, but the truth was ¾ it wasn't God's time. I had not yet been broken to the place that a real relationship with Him was more important than anything else in my life.
In the book, Victory in the Wilderness, by John Bevere, I felt washed in grace when I read that God often uses family members that are out of fellowship to break us. When we reach the point that we can go through a storm without crumbling we are on the verge of entering the Promised Land. We have to keep our eyes on Jesus and not on our circumstances. We have to love the person who is hurting us without falling prey to their manipulations. (I'm not there yet.)
We would be wise to heed Paul's words that it is God who works through us. Anything we do in the flesh will be burned on Judgment Day. Only those things that God called us to do and we did in the power of the Holy Spirit will remain. Does your testimony have a wilderness story? Look again, you may discover that you are coming through one now. If so, there is a Promised Land coming!
Father, please grant us a fresh anointing of discernment so that we will know that what we are doing is Your will. Help us to stop spinning our wheels. We need fresh mercy.
Today we end I Corinthians, tomorrow we will start on Exodus. Hope you enjoyed!
