Is what you do important? Of course critical decision, expensive purchases, health care, etc. are very important. But what about the small details of daily life – are they important?
Let’s say you are going to a repair shop – store – government office because you need service. The woman serving you seems distracted and not really paying attention to your needs. Finally, you tell her off in no uncertain terms – because you are in a hurry. After all, she is paid to serve the public! I ask you - - did God arrange that situation to frustrate you – OR – to give an opportunity to offer grace to a needy woman? Is it important? Just suppose that women is longing to be at home with her sick child who is not expected to live much longer but she can’t leave work to be with him because her husband lost his job three weeks ago. Does it matter? Urgent things can crowd out right things. (I’m so busy surely I can’t be expected to -- ).
Sometimes good things – as good as your hand or eye (Matthew 5:30) can be the enemy of the best things. We cannot allow anything to usurp God’s place. It has been well said that future events cast their shadow before them. I have a thought I’d like to add. Past events continue to cast their dividends after them. These dividends can pay out good or evil depending on the original event. As a child of poverty and now an old woman, I am still cashing the dividends from the life of my godly Mother.
Take a look at just a few of the many “Past Events” from which we are still collecting dividends:
JOSEPH (Genesis 37:28) a teen-ager sold by his brother into slavery in Egypt. Everything would be totally foreign to him – people – language – culture – religion – and not a friendly face anywhere.
How lonely and scared he felt and how painfully he missed his father. Just think of all the wonderful things we learn from his life about the Divine strategy of sovereign wisdom.
RAHAB (Joshua 6:25) She had heard with fear of the mighty works of the God of Israel and she knew there was no hope for Jericho. She also recognized the one true God. So she protected the spies with the hope that the lives of herself and her family would be spared. She could never have guessed that she would be the great-great grandmother of King David who was the ancestor of the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world.
PAUL (Acts 9:3-4) Saul was not satisfied with just to murder Stephen. Full of threatening and murderous desire, he armed himself with letters from the high priest. Those letters authorized him to arrest Christians and bring them in chains to Jerusalem. But on the Road to Damascus – an EVENT – he saw a light and heard a question. How lacking would be our knowledge of the deeper life without the epistles of Paul who was faithful in much suffering to the Lord he loved. He was beheaded in Rome and – just like Stephen – he was a martyr for the cause of Christ.
JOHN (Revelation 1:9) Yes, the same John who wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume people who didn’t welcome them. Later he became known as the Apostle of Love. He was persecuted and church history tells us that they tried to kill him by boiling him in hot oil but he didn’t die. He could not die then because (Acts 13:36) he had not yet fulfilled God’s purpose for his generation. How impoverished we would be without his Gospel, Epistles and magnificent Revelation. He lets us sit with Jesus at the Last Supper and hear the Passover Lamb explain the deep and holy significance of our Communion Service. He traces for us the history of the church from the beginning through the Dark Ages and right up to the present.
I think it would be impossible or close to impossible to add up all the dividends which continue to enrich us from the ‘EVENTS’ in the lives of these four. And there are so many others – so much more.
What am I doing to spread dividends not only after me, but right now? I have asked the Lord that whenever an unpleasant situation – by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit – I will be able to see past the unpleasantness to the need of that person - - and offer grace. But there is something else and I was rebuked.
As I look around this wicked world – brazen murders increase – daylight rapes – child molestation – no respect for authority – most things we once called sin including the murder of babies – drugs soon to be in pastries and candies and on and on – all these have been legalized. Immorality rules and morality is scorned. A Christian who speaks truth is accused of hate-speech and a Christian who lives according to his godly principles can lose his livelihood.
More and more I long to be with the Lord either by death or the Rapture. That is not wrong but there is a danger. I must guard against my theology becoming me-ology. Is it more important to me to get out of this vile mess than the millions trapped in the mess who know nothing of the Saviour’s love and redeeming grace?
I heard a Christian pastor (Michael Youssef) refer to a couple of verses and those verses brought my rebuke. Look at (Jeremiah 29:4,17) - because of their disobedience God had delivered the Jews into captivity in Babylon – the cruelest and most powerful nation on earth at that time. Then!!! – He tells them to seek the Lord and pray for peace and prosperity of the city where they are exiled. They are to bring the Light of Truth wherever they are.
If there were 120,000 in Nineveh who had no understanding of salvation, how many are there in our city, our Country – this country where most of us heard and received the Gospel of God’s grace? How many of us care for their souls?
We are praying for a reviving work of God in our churches but what about our land? What about young people all around us who have never heard the precious holy Name of Jesus except in cursing and are ensnared by the evil one? Jesus cannot come for His Church until His Church is complete. Do we share a part in that completion?
Let us storm heaven for a spiritual awakening in our cities and across our land. Then what a day of glad rejoicing when we ALL get home.
I am filled with wonder by all the privileges we have in Christ Jesus to invest our lives (even in old age) for God-honouring dividends which will be in our account (2 Corinthians 5:10) at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
