Wednesday, June
28, 2017
“Look,
I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as
doves. But beware! For you will be handed over to the courts and
will be flogged with whips in the synagogues.
You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my
followers. But this will be your
opportunity to tell the rulers and other unbelievers about me. When you are arrested, don’t worry about how
to respond or what to say. God will give
you the right words at the right time. For
it is not you who will be speaking—it will be the Spirit of your Father
speaking through you. Matthew 10:16-20(NLT)
Jesus
taught his disciples many things; in this teaching the main point could be
missed entirely if connection is lost between the shrewd and harmless demeanor
we are supposed to exhibit, and the reason why we are to be this way.
So let’s
examine it for a moment.
Shrewdness is
all about understanding your context, and then acting in the best interest of
whom you represent. For the Christ-follower,
our context is that we are at odds with
the world (James 4:4).
Considering the One we represent is Christ, shrewdness is a matter of
knowing there is opposition to the things of Christ’s kingdom, and developing
ability to discover how our actions will either enhance Christ or demean Him.
Harmlessness is
readiness to engage the hostility the world will inflict, without regards to
how it will affect our comfort or well-being; it means we are content to lay
the outcome of such engagement squarely in God’s hands, and that God will use the
confrontation of His good (our harmlessness) with the world’s violent evil.
Real
time application:
I’m
currently engaged in spiritual warfare over a health crisis. I’m praying God may use what happens for the
best Kingdom result. And that may well
depend on if I can manage to be shrewd and harmless.
I have an
appointment today with the throat doctor.
I don’t know if he is a believer or not.
The outcome of this thing could be quite benign…he might say: take
two throat lozenges and chill out; take the stress out of your life. The other end of the spectrum could be that
my vocal cords have a malignancy, involving removal of my voice box, or worse. In that case the pulpit ministry of the past
40 years is at an end.
Now, I need
to be shrewd and do the
best I can to preserve whatever tools God gave me in this life, so I will
listen intently to what the doctor says, while I invite the Great Physician to
inform my mind from within. But I need
to be as harmless as
possible also, understanding that my actions may be crucial to the faith of the
doctor in front of me. And those actions
are either going to squander, or invest in, the opportunity God is creating
with this situation to help my doctor know Him, and perhaps bring him to faith.
So…if you
got to read this before 8:45am…that is the time for my appointment with the guy
who’s going to stick that delightful tube-scope down my throat. Here’s what I’m asking as your part in my
prayer: pray, if you will, not so much
that I’ll be OK; pray
that I’ll be shrewd and harmless, and will listen to the words God wants to put
in my mouth, so I can be bold in the witness of Jesus Christ before a doctor
and staff who may have need of a more eternal kind of healing.
For You Today
I
invite you to pray – yup, right out loud, while you’ve still got a voice – this
prayer of John Wesley’s…the kind of prayer for being shrewd and harmless…a tool
in the hands of the Master carpenter:
I am no longer my own, but
thine- put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for
thee.
Let me have all things, let me
have nothing. I freely and heartily
yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Thou
art mine and I am thine. SO BE IT
NOTES
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