Wretched Man That I Am!

I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms. And in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer." - John Paton

I lean too much on the stories told by others.
God created me to tell my story. Jesus said in Acts 1:8 that we would be clothed with power when the Holy Ghost had fallen and that we would be His witness. Get it? We would testify to what we know personally. Not what we have heard others say. We take the preaching of God's Word and let it burn in us, but we walk out the truth created by the Word of God. We speak of what we know, what we have seen, what we have experienced.
How shallow some of our stories would be.

Would our stories be all about us....
Or would they involve what God did through us to bring someone into His Kingdom?
It is time for us to truly be about the work of the Kingdom rather than tidying up the kingdom. Would we dare pray for Holy Spirit to be coming into our midst and messing up our lives and schedules and jobs. REVIVAL~ To revive that which is dead or fainted. That is what I am in need of.............being revived.
My greatest fear is not sin or hell...those questions have been answered.
My greatest fear is that I will miss what God is doing.
I will miss my part in it.
I will be so self-absorbed that I will not see the fire or feel the Holy Ghost.
God, do not let me miss you!

Hebrews 10:31 reads:
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Yet we are so in need of being awakened from our spiritual slumber that we don't realize that this is where we are headed.....into the hands of a living God.

Hebrews 12:28-29 reads:
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shake, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

The quote at the beginning of this blog is from John G. Patton, a missionary for the Presbyterian church who served on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. An island filled with natives who practiced cannibalism. Who killed the wives of the men of the village when the man died. They believed that a woman should join their husband if he dies so she can serve him. John G. Patton served years after his own wife and son died there on that island. He served alone, except for the fact he wasn't alone. The Spirit of Almighty God walked with him and that island was claimed for the Kingdom of God when John G. Patton finished this life here. It cost John Patton to serve God. But all that John Patton lost, in the eyes of the world, was gain in what he found in Christ.
John Wesly, upon his death, left behind a Bible, A pair of reading glasses, very little money and oh yeah.........the Methodist Church.

I fear that we, the body of Christ (Dare I use that name?) are more interested in our comfort than in the kingdom. Let us serve God from pews and A/C. Let us hire mercenaries for God to go and do the dirty work of the kingdom. Hard? I think so and yet I am pointing the finger at myself not who ever is reading this. I find that I become quiet complacent here at Rapha. Feeling all "godly" in my office surrounded by my books and Bibles. Oh God! Forgive me for my laxness.
No one....
No one....
who claims the shed blood of Jesus for their salvation is exempt from the call of Christ to make disciples. You don't make disciples by sitting or ordering them from Amazon.com. you make them by going out looking for the right materials and gathering them all together. What material? Lives that are broken and in disrepair. Lives where hope runs dry. Lives where everyone else has given up on this life, but not God. You bring them into the Kingdom by prayer and proclaiming the Word of God. That mankind stands guilty before the throne of God unless there is repentance and confession and a receiving of forgiveness.
We all aren't called to far away places.
But we all are called.
A calling is for your life, not your pocketbook.
To obey is better than sacrifice.
We cannot wait.
We must rise and being to walk in a manner worthy of the calling we have received from Christ.

Blessing today and may God rest upon you and your families.
Please pass this blog along to others if you feel that it is of any purpose.

God on you.....
mb