Jesus said to them again,
"…As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." —John 20:21
“The great controlling factor
[in our serving] is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. The
source of our inspiration in our service for God is behind us, not ahead of us.
[…] The goal is to be true to Him— to carry out His plans. […] the great danger is that God’s call will be
replaced by the needs of the people, to the point that human sympathy for those
needs will absolutely overwhelm the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs
are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind
falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all [service]
is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs,
but is first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ— “Go therefore and make
disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19).” CHAMBERS
In the face of the great
needs in Haiti after the Hurricane, the struggle, the challenge, is to be clear
in what exactly we are to do. Reading some
of the many posts on Facebook about Haiti, I noticed one in particular. The point being made was that it is OK to
help people but you should not make them listen to the Gospel to get a bag of
rice. Think about that. That is the
epitome of the natural man’s understanding.
Our faith is nothing more than a philosophy and we should not take advantage
of a person’s plight to promote a philosophy.
Philosophy is “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge,
reality, and existence”.
When Jesus met
the woman at the well, she had need of water, Jesus offered her something
eternal, a new reality. (John 4) When Peter and John met the lame beggar at
the gate (Acts 3), he wanted money
.. they offered him eternal life by faith in Jesus. Matthew
25 says that we are to help people that need help. But we are also told that while we are going
(Matthew 28), while we are serving,
while we are living out our lives, we are to make disciples. The two go together. The person who wrote about our not sharing
the Gospel as we help others is struggling with the reality of Jesus. The person does not understand that we cannot
make someone believe the Truth, but we must share the Truth. We certainly would
not withhold help until someone made a profession of faith. But just as certainly we will tell everyone
we meet about the One who sent us. Jesus
has shown us the way … "…As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."
—John 20:21. We need to be found
faithful in our going. ELGIN
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