If It Wasn't For Me You Wouldn't Have This Post

If you’re like me you are cringing with election coming this year if for no other reason the airwaves will be cluttered with political ads. It always causes me a giggle to hear candidates make bold claims about their actions. If you took their ads at face value, they are personally reasonable for our education system, economy, and many other aspects of our lives. Never mind the teacher, or worker that actually does the day to day work! One candidate claimed he was “getting the weapons our troops need to fight the war on terror.” As if he had designed them himself, making them in his backyard and piloting them over on his own boat!

Candidates often feel the need to exaggerate their importance to justify their existence. You see the exact opposite about the workers of the Gospel. In 1 Corinthians 3:5-8 we read, “ What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

In working in the kingdom, it doesn’t matter what part you play in the process, the real credit always goes to God. God’s worker seeks only to receive praise from him not from other men.

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Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

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Praying For A Famine

In the story of the prodigal son, we see a young man who leaves home to go into the far country. There he falls into a life of sin and excess. His funds from the inheritance run out but then something tragic happens, a famine. This famine means there isn’t enough for the people of that land much less this young outsider. They let him watch the pigs but won’t even let him eat their slop. It’s only then that the boy realizes the foolishness of his choices and the need to go home. He thinks he will only be accepted as a hired man, not a son but the hunger has burned away his pride. He does not care anymore. Yet his father accepts him back, it even seems he has been watching the road longing for his return. A celebration ensues, rejoicing over the lost one that has come home. Have we considered however what got him to come home? If not for the famine the young man may never have had the epiphany that he needed to come back. Famines are terrible things and they don’...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

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