Thursday, June 23, 2016

Say What?

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.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

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[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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