Just back from an Annual Meeting at Grace Chapel Primitive Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. We weren't able to stay for the whole thing, and my recalcitrant sciatic nerve made me miss one morning's session, but I very much enjoyed the gatherings I was able to be part of. Elder Lasserre Bradley preached wonderful--very helpful and encouraging--messages. Adding to that were other ministers that brought us good, solid messages from God's Word.
While away from home, I continued my reading in Philip Yancey's book, Grace Notes, and yesterday's reading is one that is connected to my GRACE posts, so I'm including it below. Later, I hope to send to other posts taken from Yancey's writings. I labeled the one below "Perspective", because it sheds a lot of light on believers' relationships to each other in Christ. For all true believers, these thoughts are enlightening.
~~~~~
"God miraculously provided food for the Israelites wandering through the Sinai Desert, and even made sure their shoes would not wear out. Jesus too fed hungry people and ministered directly to their needs. Many Christians who read those thrilling stories look back with a sense of nostalgia or even disappointment. "Why doesn't God act like that now?" they wonder. "Why doesn't God miraculously provide for my needs?"
"But the New Testament letters seem to show a different pattern at work. Locked in a cold dungeon, Paul turned to his longtime friend Timothy to meet his physical needs. "Bring my cloak and my scrolls," he wrote, "and also bring Mark, who has always been so helpful." In other straits, Paul received "God's comfort" in the form of a visit from Titus. And when a famine broke out in Jerusalem, Paul himself led a fund-raising effort among all the churches he had founded. God was meeting the needs of the young church as surely as he had met the needs of the Israelites, but indirectly, through fellow members of Christ's body. Paul made no such distinction as "the church did this, but God did that." Such a division would miss the point he had made so often. The church is Christ's body; therefore if the church did it, God did it.
Paul's insistence on this truth may trace back to his first, dramatic personal encounter with God. At the time, he was a fierce persecutor of Christians, a notorious bounty hunter. But on the road to Damascus he saw a light bright enough to blind him for three days, and heard a voice from heaven: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
Persecute you? Persecute who? I'm only after those heretics the Christians.
"Who are you, Lord?" asked Saul at last, knocked flat on the ground.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," came the reply.
That sentence summarizes as well as anything the change brought about by the Holy Spirit. Jesus had been executed months before. It was the Christians Saul was after, not Jesus. But Jesus, alive again, informed Saul that those people were in fact his own body. What hurt them, hurt him. It was a lesson the apostle Paul would never forget.
~~~~~
While away from home, I continued my reading in Philip Yancey's book, Grace Notes, and yesterday's reading is one that is connected to my GRACE posts, so I'm including it below. Later, I hope to send to other posts taken from Yancey's writings. I labeled the one below "Perspective", because it sheds a lot of light on believers' relationships to each other in Christ. For all true believers, these thoughts are enlightening.
~~~~~
"God miraculously provided food for the Israelites wandering through the Sinai Desert, and even made sure their shoes would not wear out. Jesus too fed hungry people and ministered directly to their needs. Many Christians who read those thrilling stories look back with a sense of nostalgia or even disappointment. "Why doesn't God act like that now?" they wonder. "Why doesn't God miraculously provide for my needs?"
"But the New Testament letters seem to show a different pattern at work. Locked in a cold dungeon, Paul turned to his longtime friend Timothy to meet his physical needs. "Bring my cloak and my scrolls," he wrote, "and also bring Mark, who has always been so helpful." In other straits, Paul received "God's comfort" in the form of a visit from Titus. And when a famine broke out in Jerusalem, Paul himself led a fund-raising effort among all the churches he had founded. God was meeting the needs of the young church as surely as he had met the needs of the Israelites, but indirectly, through fellow members of Christ's body. Paul made no such distinction as "the church did this, but God did that." Such a division would miss the point he had made so often. The church is Christ's body; therefore if the church did it, God did it.
Paul's insistence on this truth may trace back to his first, dramatic personal encounter with God. At the time, he was a fierce persecutor of Christians, a notorious bounty hunter. But on the road to Damascus he saw a light bright enough to blind him for three days, and heard a voice from heaven: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
Persecute you? Persecute who? I'm only after those heretics the Christians.
"Who are you, Lord?" asked Saul at last, knocked flat on the ground.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," came the reply.
That sentence summarizes as well as anything the change brought about by the Holy Spirit. Jesus had been executed months before. It was the Christians Saul was after, not Jesus. But Jesus, alive again, informed Saul that those people were in fact his own body. What hurt them, hurt him. It was a lesson the apostle Paul would never forget.
~~~~~
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