Mark 9:38-50
John spoke up, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.”
Jesus wasn’t pleased. “Don’t stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally. Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.
“On the other hand, if you give one of these simple, childlike believers a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.
“If your hand or your foot gets in God’s way, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.
“Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you’ll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace.”
February 5th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I\’m broken. My body and my brain can\’t do everything that I want them to do anymore.
They may heal themselves in time, but I may never be able to manage all the things that I used to do.
I will probably never be the person I once was.
Yet that\’s not necessarily a bad thing. I\’m being changed by this experience, and I hope it\’s for the better. If God uses this to refine me then that\’s okay by me. And if God would rather have me broken than unrefined, then my brokeness won\’t be the end of the story. I\’m valuable, as I am. Here and now. In fact, I\’m better than I was in my unbroken state.
God takes the rational, sane, logical attitudes of our human society and turns them upside down (again). The question is, how do we turn things \’God\’s way up\’?
February 5th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
So even if an elder pastor who seems to have lost his compassion for his people, who seems to be all about himself, and who has preached so long it just seems to very automatic - we must still love and respect him because while we feel his motives may not be in the right place, he still seems to reach people threw his very dynamic sermons? And because his love for Christ is not in question?
February 5th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Refining fires are not intended to gently warm; they purge.
That doesn\’t make it easier at the time, it just offers the chance to develop your faith that a God bigger and wiser is in control. Sometimes faith is the final straw to cling on to (however fragile). Sometimes God lets you know why fires come; sometimes He doesn\’t. Sometimes you get to use the experience to help others; sometimes you don\’t.
God will have His way, and He delights in bringing us closer to Him. Sometimes, only when we feel really broken do we allow Him free reign to rebuild us as He wants and the fire is to burn away the unnecessary stuff we cling on to rather than clinging on to Him.
Beth, you sound so brave x