(Before It's News)
Our lives as believers are meant for so much more than we let them be in our great country. It’s easy to be complacent, even apathetic. Sometimes I desperately wish I could WAKE UP! (spiritually) then other times I lazily drowse like a fat cat in a sunny window, happy that my life is warm cream and a soft pillow.
But it’s not like that for everyone. In fact, it’s not for a lot of people. The Bible calls them the needy, fatherless, orphans, widows, those in prisons (physical and spiritual)…I think a lot about those people. But I still think of myself more. Lord help me, I don’t like it. But what’s that verse of Paul’s? That which I will I don’t do, and that which I don’t want to do I do…or something like that- Oh wretched man (woman) that I am!
Yesterday in my daily Bible reading I came to a verse that zapped me- I mean it slayed me! You might not be as moved as I was over it, but the Holy Spirit was speaking to ME, in MY quiet time (of which there is far too little around here)- the verse is the Lord God Himself illustrating what Knowing Him really is- and isn’t that the point of all our Bible reading and church going and sermons, and studies…to KNOW Him?! I felt like I hit the jackpot!
Ready…? here it is:
Jeremiah 22:16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? declares the LORD.
SO, there you have it in a nutshell. Serve and love others. Take care of the defenseless ones. The proof is in the pudding, so-to-speak.
It brings to mind 1 Corinthians 13
1Co 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
1Co 13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
1Co 13:3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1Co 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
1Co 13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
1Co 13:6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1Co 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1Co 13:8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
1Co 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
1Co 13:10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
1Co 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
1Co 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
and it flat out smacks of James 1:27
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
and
Pro 28:27 Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.
Can’t forget Deuteronomy either…- it’s all over the whole Bible for Heaven’s sake.
SO, my grand plans about giving up foster care for infants and maybe even adopting again? (so that I can have time for horseback riding, visiting, travel, making cheese, get a tan, work out…blah blah blah) I’m going to have to shelve that for now.
Because I want to wake up and try to remember this:
1Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for his own possession, that you may
proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.
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