Preface: I do what I do....in these posts....for almost seventeen years now. It requires time....and a willingness to be criticized....but that is what I feel that I need to do. Someone else has something else that they feel that they need to do. It may be in teaching Bible study....or the tedious and often unrecognized duties of a deacon. It may be in going house to house....or into the prisons and hospitals and old folks homes. It may be in sending money to missionaries....or it may be as missionaries. It may be as a pastor or church secretary. Some have more glory in the church's eyes than others....but not in God's eyes....for He chooses us and give us everything that we have and everything that we need. I need to warn the church....that it has settled for preaching that will not change lives....and has been sucked into the culture....particularly in politics. I need to warn that we in the church no longer know what it means to be born again....and throughout all of this I need to examine myself....or I might be the one with delusion. We need each other. The following was first posted this past July:
Economist Milton Friedman rather famously in 1980 gave a talk and produced a video....in which he held up a pencil and said that there is not...."a single person in the world who can make this pencil." He then went on to talk about the need for wood and steel for a saw and the compressed graphite and the rubber from the eraser and the yellow paint and the glue....all coming from different parts of the world. His point was that it takes everyone working together to make capitalism work.
The Apostle Paul made a similar point many centuries before as he described....through the Holy Spirit....how believers are all part of the body. Some parts may have more glory than others but we all need each other.
In 1975 I was working at a beer distributor....and two of the best tennis players in the world walked in to buy a case of pop.....some of you mistakenly call it soda. Those two players were Vitas Gerulaitis and Evonne Goolagong....who were on the then professional team tennis....Pittsburgh Triangles. I played tennis at the time and knew who they were. They were friendly and talkative....and I followed their careers. Some people may have more glory in this world than others....but we are all just people....come into the world estranged from the creator God of everything....and in need of mercy through salvation.
A friend was talking to me the other day about how divided the church was. He was really distraught. Some have more glory than others. John MacArthur had more glory than my friend who is the janitor in his small church....who has more glory than me.....because everyone has and deserves more glory than me....but we need each other. John MacArthur could not do it without the janitor in his church....for if there were no janitors in that megachurch....there would not have ever been a megachurch.
Christians known as....Reformed....with their history of doctrinal soundness....have a glory deservingly unto themselves. Pentecostals in my experience with them....share the gospel with a passion more than anyone. Some in the church today know more than others that Jesus is coming back right now....because they have a passion for Jesus to return right now....and Jesus rewards that passion, There is a glory for the churches in Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe that we in the West can only read about. There is a glory for the common uneducated laborer that the genius billionaire will never know.
There is a glory for the humble....and a glory for the servant.....and a glory for the minister of a small fundamentalist church that the megachurch pastor of tens of thousands will never know.....but the grandest glory of all....is the glory that any one of us....Jew or Greek....man or woman....master or bondservant.....can give to the only who deserves all the glory....the Son of Man who came to set us free....who ascended to the Father....and who pleads our case and gives us strength to persevere until He comes again....to receive from all creation the glory and honor that has always been His! Marantha.....Lord Jesus.....come!
Afterthought: A few posts down there is a nine-minute YouTube testimony from Pete Maravich....given at a Billy Graham crusade. Please watch this and be blessed.....but in it....towards the end....he says this...."I want all of you here tonight to know this about Peter Maravich....you may never have heard of me....it makes no difference....I'm just one person on this earth....saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ...." Billy Graham was just one person on this earth....as was Pete Maravich....as am I....and as are you. Each one of us is given something to do. This is what I do. What it is that God has called you to do? If nothing else....please pray for me....and I will pray for you....as I pray for each visitor that comes to these posts!
