May 18, 2012
Tailgater
The other day when I was on the highway driving to another town the SUV
behind me was matching my speed and staying right on my bumper. After about
five miles I picked up speed and went around the truck in front of me just to
see if I could shake the tailgater. The SUV then snuggled up tightly to the
truck and seemed to be content in the trucker’s blind spot. It finally dawned
on me that the driver of the SUV was probably trying to conserve his own gas by
drafting other vehicles. I’ve known believers whose actions resemble that of
the tailgater. Rather than exerting any energy on personal Bible study, they
come to class content to just draft off those who have done their study and are
prepared to discuss the lesson.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Maybe the one thing which most validates for me the truth of God’s Word is the nature of His mercy. All the talk the Bible makes of His love and how He gave up His place as God to become a lowly man and die for us is more than fine and better than good, but the way He forgives so the person truly desiring life can have it is final evidence. “Each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done...If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (I Cor 3:13b & 15) The man himself being saved implies none of his work survived the test. Yet, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’” (Mat 7:22-23) There is clearly as much difference between the man who survived the fire and these who go, “But, Lord, Lord...” as there is between the way the Lord treats the two.
-----I used to call that difference “the golden thread”. At one time it was greatly important to me because, frankly, my life was not largely fruitful. I well knew it, too. I didn’t try to shuck and jive either Him or myself about that fact, but held it out openly between us as the product of my own disobedient flesh. I knew it did not matter whether I was full of it or had only a granule of it; any trace of it precludes life. I knew only two things were imperative to life for me: 1) that I sincerely desire the life God describes; and 2) that I hold on tightly to the one who gives it. So, in those darker days of scary fruitlessness (or should I say, “...more fruitlessness,” since I still ain’t the most fruitful twig on the vine,) the direction of my soul was that the golden thread - Jesus Christ - was ineradicably the last thing I would possibly consider releasing from my grasp. I think maybe it was all the thief who died beside Christ that day had to grasp, too. Maybe it is all any of us has to hold. It is His mercy and grace. If it doesn’t work, He doesn’t love and His Word isn’t true. But, “Let God be true although all men are false.” (Rom 3:4) Thank God it works.
-----So we are built into His holy temple through the grace of Christ and partake in its effects by the same. “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him.” (Rom 15:1) This temple is as much a place of supply as it is a place for supplying. So always in it through grace are those who need and those who supply. And as often as those in need in one situation are those who supply in another, those who supply in one are in need in another. This is merely the nature of God’s grace at work in His who abide even while in a broken and chaotic world.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment