Sunday, October 12, 2008

Go into all the world...

Tonight was such a bummer of a night for me. My family back home along with many of my friends, all trucked it up to Princeton Missouri for the yearly bonfire at the Donnell's farm. I'm missing all the big events:(


I can't legally ride my dirt bike at night yet, so after watching the unusually large waves for SB, I headed back up to my little tent like house just as the sun was going down.

I walked though the door and was greeted by a rather catastrophic mess and rather odd smell. My place (as my mom would say) "looked like a tornado hit it". After checking e-mails and making a few business related calls I looked around again and decided that this is no way for a 22 year old to live. So after getting over the fact that my house wasn't going to clean itself, I put on an audio book "Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secrets" and began the daunting task of "PROJECT - DEEP CLEAN".

While folding my clean cloths, that had been sitting on the floor for 2 days, picking up trash and piling dirty dishes, I heard the reader say something that was very convicting.

Hudson Taylor was addressing a church in England just before going back to China to continue God's work of spreading the gospel to those who had never heard. He was explaining how there were regions as large as England that had not one preacher and then he said this... "It will not due for you to say that you have no special call to China. With these facts before you you need rather to wonder weather you have a special call to stay home. If in the sight of God you can not say you are sure you have a special call to stay at home why are you disobeying the Savior's plan and His command to go. Why are you refusing to come to the help of the Lord again of the All Mighty. If however it is perfectly clear that duty not inclination, not pleasure, not business, detains you at home. Are you laboring in prayer for those needy ones as you might. Is you influence used to advance the cause of God among them? Are you means largely employed as they should be in helping forward their salvation.

I found this convicting for me because I have always looked at it the other way around. It's not a "SPECIAL" calling by God to be in the work of His ministry. No, but rather it is the direct calling of all who are in Christ."

It may not be in China or in some far off land but until we can say that all around us are saved the call remains.

In the darkest of places, even a small light shines bright.


And He (Jesus) said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Mark 16:15

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes"...Romans 1:16

John 3:16-21
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

Just a thought,
Paul

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's an awesome picture of your bike and the ocean. :)