Skip to main content

Share With The Lord's People

             Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

 

I know some people who wish God would drop signs down on fishhooks to tell them what to do. It would be useful if God would do something like that to tell us that this person is in need, or this person needs ________. From the stories I’ve heard, He sometimes does tell someone that someone else needs, or what someone else needs. More often than not, He doesn’t. It might be a nice, spiritually romantic idea to wash someone’s feet, but if what that person needs is $10, or a challenge to pray, or admonitions about a sinful practice, washing their feet doesn’t meet a need. It meets our need to feel like spiritual giants, but that’s not sharing with the Lord’s people who are in need, it’s using them to meet ours.

The first two things we need to share with the Lord’s people who are in need are time and space. We need to get to know them well enough to learn what they really need and share enough of ourselves that they feel comfortable expressing their needs to us. We need to pay attention for long enough to notice that they have a need they can’t or won’t confess with words. And we need to be around for long enough that others can discover our needs, and meet them because we’re all needy in one way or another.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...