"The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” To influence someone’s life, someone’s eternity, is very significant. Let us be mindful of the impact we may be having — or will have — on those God brings into our life!
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.
Regardless of how trained and skilled we are; regardless of how knowledgeable and experienced we are and how hard we try, serving the Lord in our own strength is a recipe for a burned-out and barren tree. It’s only through Christ in us, working through us, that we can produce a crop pleasing to God.
Being filled with the Spirit doesn’t mean God is going to change our personality! It means He empowers the obedient Christian to tell others about Jesus as He provides the opportunity — and He does it through the personality and gifts He created us with!
“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name, they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well” Mark 16:17-18.
God is just and would not condemn anyone for rejecting a Christ they never had the opportunity to hear of. But, listen carefully: The person who has never heard of Christ is still not “off the hook” — there is another damnable offense which Scripture presents: Rejecting the knowledge of God as revealed in creation and the conscience of man.
God designed us to be sieved, His blessings flowing through us into the lives of others. This happens only when our primary focus is knowing Jesus Christ and making Him known. When we lose sight of this objective we first become root-bound then root rotten. Evidence of rot? Spiritual apathy (particularly toward spiritually lost people) and loss of joy.
The great reformer-theologian John Calvin (1509-1564) used the Latin metaphor theatrum gloriae to describe creation the “grand theatre” in which God’s glory, power, wisdom, and goodness are on public display, “being too clear to escape the notice of anyone, however obtuse.”