"How will we as a body make a difference in our community by embracing our responsibility to rise up as co-laborers?" ~ @DavidRogers814, @CrossPointeVal
A Place of Sending Matt. 9:35-38
Despite waking in sunny Florida, I was having a rough Sunday morning. A breath-taking, spirit-quenching, anger-filled morning as we found the church and pulled into the parking place.
I slipped on my anger pack with the fifteen-minute IV drip
and entered the former grocery store, feeling all eyes turn to me under my cloud
of gloom and doom.
- Resisting the urge to throw my shoe across the room.
- Praying for the cloud to evaporate.
- The lights dimmed, my cloud blended in, sweet relief, anger management 101.
- Trying to turn in the anger drip for the compassion drip.
- Not gonna happen.
- Gripping my pen, otherwise I am going to throw it.
Matthew chapter 9 -Jesus did preaching and healing, back and forth, neither one without the other.
Until verse 35. He pauses and checks to see if the disciples understand. They have to go out and do this. Take action. It's the idea of whether you are just participating in religion or actually being used by God. The number seated in our church should be less than the number sent out.
But in my anger filled cloud, I was distracted by the compassion Jesus demonstrated as he preached and healed.
But in my anger filled cloud, I was distracted by the compassion Jesus demonstrated as he preached and healed.
"But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd."I was moved by anger, not compassion....
I was so incredibly angry with what a person was doing in my life that I had no compassion for this person. I saw myself on a see-saw with me perched firmly on the anger side, leaving compassion high and dry on the other side. How to find balance? How to be angry when necessary and compassionate when necessary? How to know the difference, the timing of each?
@DavidRogers814 indicated the answer is in Ephesians 2, but it's tough. It might require death to self-centered comfort or something gnarly like that. I am so trying and so failing and so stinking angry.
CrossPointe Church, 110 Northside Dr., Valdosta, GA
BTW - does your church utilize and encourage the use of social media and electronic devices? You should.
CrossPointe Church, 110 Northside Dr., Valdosta, GA
BTW - does your church utilize and encourage the use of social media and electronic devices? You should.
2 comments:
Ugh. Notice how easily I skip the message of go out and labor and focus on stay in and work on myself.
Then enemy is so clever in how he twists the truth to cause us to focus on anything but the Word of God and His simple instructions. The example Jesus gives is one of focusing on others ... yet the enemy causes us to focus on ourselves by thinking of all our faults and how little we actually 'do'. The word 'go' simply implies to get up and go ... not sit around and think. We are to turn our concerns, problems, fears and angers over to God ... trust He has the situation well at hand ... and go. Go to someone else who is bearing a burden they need to lay down. Share with them this message. Be compassionate ... even if they don't 'get' it. Taking the focus off ourselves - even on the parts that we know need 'work' - and having compassion for others is what we are called to do. It takes faith. And it takes a God who is big enough to handle all the things we can't figure out. Sometimes we forget that, yeah ... He is big enough.
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