A WORD FOR TODAY, June 11, 2013 “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15:50-58, ASV I often talk about our imperfection, about how we will fail as we go about our work in the world. I talk about how temptation has gotten the best of the best of us and that we will never be perfect like our Lord Jesus. I think it is important for us to remember that our flesh is still perishable, even with Christ as our Lord and Savior. We need to remain humble before God in the reality that we will never attain a state equal to God. The problem we have with this point of view is that we easily use our imperfection to justify our failure. We accept our inability to accomplish the tasks set before us and ignore them. We say we can’t make a difference because we are fallible so we don’t even try. We think that our imperfections make any work for the kingdom impossible, so we step back and wait for God to make it easy. “Give me something I know I can do, Lord, then I will go out in faith.” When we think like this, we have faith in ourselves, not in God. I saw a movie today that I thought had a very powerful message. It reminded me that we have not just been saved, but we’ve been invited into God’s presence, adopted as children, sent into the world AND equipped with everything we need to accomplish God’s work. We tend to think that it’s ok to be a failure because we know we aren’t perfect and that God will accomplish the work even without us. But in accepting failure we forget that it is not us that are fighting the war, but God in and with us. We should not go with an expectation of failure, but of victory! We are lambs sent out to be slaughtered, but God in us makes us lions. We are facing the wolves, and when we try to do it with our own strength and purpose, we will always fail. But when we remember that God is in us and with us, then we can go out looking for the victory that God has promised. Remember daily that you are only flesh and blood, but even more so remember daily that you are filled with the God of the universe. The tasks set before you might be scary. They might be dangerous. The world will hate you. The world will even think that it has overcome you. But the world can never overcome the God who is with you. He has already won the victory. Now go out and fight for His Kingdom, take the Gospel message to those who are still imprisoned in the darkness and hand them the invitation to enter into God’s presence. In His time and way, He will always win. We just need to go forth in the faith that God is the Victor and that He has chosen us to be part of His army.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:07:29 +0000
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