Wednesday, June 23,
2016
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned
as a child. But when I grew up, I put
away childish things. Now
we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we
will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now
is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as
God now knows me completely. Three
things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is
love. 1 Corinthians 13:11-13(NLT)
She was only 8 or 9 years old;
Gracie[2] attended
our church in Jacksonville, Florida.
Every Sunday she would arrive like a whirlwind, full of energy and
cutting a wide pathway of noise and laughter.
Gracie didn’t have a quiet home life, and her attention-getting behavior
made her a considerable challenge; the more we tried to love her, the more
difficult it became to maintain a non-anxious presence! She was a handful!
One Sunday our youth minister,
Mark, taught on this passage many call The Love Chapter, and
referred to the cross as the greatest act of love ever!
Gracie said, Huh? Mark replied, you mean you’ve never heard that
story? Gracie simply shook her
head “no”. Later Mark confessed to me
that, growing up in a Christian home and in-church all his life, he’d just
naturally assumed everyone knows the Gospel story.
Reality check: They DON’T!
Many of us, particularly we professional
Christians, (pastors and other church vocational obsessive
compulsive religionists) claim to know Christ, and want to be effective
witnesses of His saving grace and magnificent love – that love which is
greatest of all, and will last throughout eternity. Too bad we miss it that sometimes people just
don’t have the Bible memorized.
Perhaps we could be more like D.
L. Moody, the 19th century evangelist. It is said that Moody mentally saw a red “L” on the forehead
of everyone he met; the “L” stands for LOST, and he refused to erase it until he
found out if the person knew Jesus.
For You Today
Here’s a hint about that Moody thing – the red “L” doesn’t show up by itself; you
mentally paint it there because you care.
Go to VIDEO
[1] Title Image: By
Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
[2]
Not her name – but this
is her real story.
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