Rich, Pretty People

...who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

15Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

Esther 4:14b-16 (NIV)

Last night, I was sitting by a dear friend at a wonderful concert.  She looked at one of the performers and said, "I'd like to hear her story."  Here this woman was, beautiful!  Talented!  She was one of the "pretty people".  

Let me put it to you straight this morning.  There are no pretty people.  Just like we put concealer on our facial blemishes or hair weaves over our thinning hair, much of our energy in "first world countries" goes to concealing our imperfections and hiding our pain.  We may look like movie stars or live like the saintliest of saints.  Don't ever look at another and think, "He has it all together." Even if he or she is a Christian, there is always some measure of conflict or pain. 

The Bible makes it clear that, even Jesus struggled with the burden of living the life of a human being.  In the Garden of Eden, His agony was so great that He sweat drops of blood!  Besides Him (as if we needed more examples), there is not one biblical figure I can think of who comes off as "Mr. or Ms. All That".  All are flawed.  All have challenges.  Most make terrible decisions at some point.

This is why it is so important for the Body of Christ to live radically, love radically, as The Body of Christ.  So that, from our "royal position", we can serve our fellow man and tell him the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because although all flounder, flop and sometimes fail, there IS a difference between living this earthly life with Jesus Christ or without Him.  Regardless of the obvious issue of going to Heaven or Hell after physical death, there is the issue of the abundant life.

What does it mean to be rich?  It has nothing to do with money.  It has everything to do with abundance, with peace.  It is a wealth only found in the everlasting riches of Jesus Christ, that Prince of Peace, born a lowly Babe in a manger.  It is finding all our needs met by being accepted, forgiven and set free.  This past week, a well-known figure in my home county took his own life.  By all outward appearances, by all worldly standards he was successful and happy; he was "rich". Heartbreakingly, his pain was so great that he saw no other release from it than to remove his soul from this mortal world, in the most violent way.  Such tremendous suffering!

Oh people of God!  Treat every, single person as a bleeding soul.  Even the people of God are often "walking wounded", as opposed to the unsaved, who are the true "walking dead".  We, God's very own beloved, MUST be the bridge between the dying and the King - - whether our brothers or sisters in Christ or those who are still "on the outside of the gates to the kingdom".

In the past I have bought clothes for my sons - - - beautiful, expensive, trendy clothes!  And, I have taken them to a charity with the tags still attached.  They would not wear them.  Beautiful gifts, wasted.  How similar our Savior must feel, to see us wasting our gifts - - hoarding our physical and especially spiritual wealth - - when all around us are suffering people? 

"The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs."  

Matthew 5:3 (HCSB)

 Most of the time, being attuned to the needs of others (I started to say "the needy", but we are ALL "the needy") does not call for us to lay down our lives, at least not in the physical sense, as was the case with Mordecai and Esther.  Some have often wondered if they would be willing to make a similarly extreme sacrifice for someone else, what they would do in a "If I perish, I perish" moment.  I have the answer for you:  if you are tight-fisted in the small things, you will most likely be hard-hearted and selfish in the bigger things. If giving yourself away, being others-focused, is not the way you "roll" on a regular basis, your heart will be so hard when confronted with a major sacrifice that its muscle will not be able to respond as Jesus would.  

And, how DID He respond?  By laying down His very life, after living a life of magnanimous giving to others.  May we, His own, do the same.  Because, "for such a time as this..."

Father, open our eyes to the needs of those around us.  May we not stop with the seeing, but move on to the giving of our riches in Your Son, our Savior.  In this way, Lord, we celebrate Christmas, all year long, all our lives long.  In Jesus' name, amen.

Source:

Voskamp, Ann. The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. 

A Striving of the Bowels

Good morning,

An exemplary life is a compassionate life, a life marked by compassion for those who do not know the Savior.  

We read over and over in the New Testament that Jesus was "moved with compassion" (Matthew 9:36). Watch what the early 20th century evangelist Charles Spurgeon had to say about that phrase:

The original word is a very remarkable one. It is not found in classic Greek. It is not found in the Septuagint. The fact is, it was a word coined by the evangelists themselves. They did not find one in the whole Greek language that suited their purpose, and therefore they had to make one. It is expressive of the deepest emotion; a striving of the bowels—a yearning of the innermost nature with pity. As the dictionaries tell us— Ex intimis visceribus misericordia commoveor. I suppose that when our Saviour looked upon certain sights, those who watched him closely perceived that his internal agitation was very great, his emotions were very deep, and then his face betrayed it, his eyes gushed like founts with tears, and you saw that his big heart was ready to burst with pity for the sorrow upon which his eyes were gazing. He was moved with compassion. His whole nature was agitated with commiseration for the sufferers before him.

His compassion was so deep there was not a Greek word for it, and Greek is a marvelously expressive language.  They had 3 different words for "love", for goodness sake!  Jesus - - - the Indescribable One.  He was heartbreakingly compassionate for the needs of others.  Remember how He cried as He was on the hilltop overlooking Jerusalem, just before the "triumphant entry" into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it!

Luke 13:34

I am so convicted by this because often my heart is unmoved by the needs of those who are suffering, who are needy, or lonely, or sick or shunned...or lost without Christ. 
I shut my eyes to the sight of their suffering and close my ears to their pleas.  I throw some money at them from time to time and think I've done my part, but God forbid that I should get my pretty clothes dirty.

What about that last group, the lost?  In the college Bible study group Hubster and I co-lead with another couple, we are studying a book called Erasing Hell, by Francis Chan. The author wrote the book because in modern-day American churches we have largely erased Hell from our vocabularies.  We don't preach about it, but more importantly, we don't live in the reality of it.  That is, if we really believed in an actual Hell, would we not be living differently?  Would we not have a severe "striving of the bowels" for those God has placed in our paths?  Would we still be afraid to share the gospel, for fear of being misunderstood or rejected?

Let's be honest.  What we need as Jesus Christ's Church is a heaping helping of compassion, not the phony compassion that gives lip-service to Him, not the kind where we go to church on Sunday to wave our hands around exclaiming how we "love the Lord!" and then live the rest of the week loving on ourselves. 

Lord Jesus, over and over we stand in church and sing about how we want to be like You, but I confess that I've not been a big fan of Your compassion.  I've been largely unmoved by the example you set...how Your poured Yourself out for "the unlovely".  I've been deceived into thinking that I've been living an exemplary life, but when I face this ugly truth about my hard-heartedness, I realize that I've got a ways to go.  Show me and lead me, Lord, to open my heart to the lost, the  "poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."  (Matthew 5:3).

Source:

http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/3438.htm