Devo 1
9/1/99
"Know the King, Build His Kingdom"
Good day to all my brothers and sisters out there in email land. I want to talk to you today, about Jesus! Can you say Jesus?! Halelulia! Having now come into the real world and being free from the bonds of homework, I have suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Even when I do get a job, that will leave most evenings and weekends open. Rather than just waste all this free time by sitting in front of the TV set, I want to start doing something useful with my time, and hopefully spiritually edifying for myself as well as for others. To this end, I will be starting a kind of weekly 'devotional' to send out over email to all of you. As I said, I do this mostly for myself. There is nothing more frustrating than to have a spiritual epiphany only to forget it ten minutes later. But I also do this for you because I know that what God reveals should not be kept secret. What I expect from all of you readers is first of all, let me know if this is something you would like to see continued. I don't want to be pumping out all these words over email if everyone is just ignoring them. Also, let me know if anything I write does not fully fit in with your understanding of what the Bible teaches. Since this will be also for my learning, I don't want to encourage any un-Biblical thinking by not having fully thought through an issue. Finally, if you should feel that anyone not on the list would benefit from one of the 'devotionals' feel free to send it to them. And so let me start with this...
"Know the King,
Build His Kingdom"
In my college group, for as long as I've been going, one of the major focuses has been on outreach. And rightly so as I believe any Christian's life should be aimed at telling people of Christ. The importance of this can be seen in that Jesus Christ Himself, chose as his last words on Earth the command to go and tell the whole world the good news of the Gospel of Christ. Even throughout the Old Testament it is clear that God's ultimate desire is that all the Earth would know and Love Him. What is amazing about this (and also very humbling) is that God has chosen to make us His messengers. He has given us the task of bringing His Word to the nations.
Why would God do this? If God wanted to, he could translate the Bible into every single spoken language and then drop copies of it from heaven to all the people who need it. But since God has not done this, it stands to reason that a greater purpose will be served through sending believers, imperfect though we are, out to those who are lost. I believe this serves (at least) two purposes: That those who know Christ will grow closer to Him, and that those who do not know Christ will experience the 'joy of salvation' for the first time. It is on the first I would like to focus.
I don't think that God ever intended the Christian life to be a solo venture. Solomon realized this when he wrote, "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecc. 4:12) Even look at the person of God. Though we call Him one God, we also call Him three persons. In fact, if we define the Christian life as one aimed at spreading the Word, we cannot do this without God's help. To do so would be futile. Isaiah 26:18b says, "We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world." It is God who saves people, not us, we are merely the messengers.
Dependence on God, therefore, is key to the spreading of His Word. Not just partial dependence, but complete unmitigated dependence. Now if you are like me, you will read that previous sentence, and perhaps without even realizing it, you will 'understand' that this does not include areas like food or housing, or summer plans for next year. But what you and I both need to realize is that even these areas need to be given over to God. I can say this because of the remarkable passage in Matthew 6:25-34. Here Jesus makes it clear that if you "seek first His kingdom and his righteousness", all the necessities of life will be given to you! After all, if God has chosen to spread His Gospel through us, don't you think that He will do everything in His power to make sure that we get what we need to fulfill this task?
So what are we doing with our lives? Are we trying to take matters in our own hand perhaps not realizing that God has promised to take care of everything? I'm just as scared as you are in considering 'casting ALL my cares on Him'. It seems that we need something that we can be in control of. Why are we trying to build our own pitiful little shacks, when God has called us to build His kingdom—maybe not the buildings, but the population. After all, the more the merrier!