Go into all the world and teach the good news of the Kingdom of God. If God has called me to minister, why do I look different from those that we see on TV and in magazines? How can I drink beer and wine? Why do I walk where I walk and talk where I talk? Some say to you, to minister for God and/or Christ one must look one way and talk one way and drink this and not that and eat that and not this. But what does the Son of God, the head of Christ, say? The Kingdom of Heaven is not meat or drink. John the Baptist came neither eating or drinking and was called mad; Jesus came both eating and drinking and was called a glutton and drunkard. Jesus has not come to the righteous, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. If we minister only to those sitting in a pew we are missing the ministry of Christ. Go you therefore into all the world and teach the good news of the Kingdom of God.
We stand in front of the pew and sing, “where He leads me, I will follow,” but do not go to the weak or the dying if they are not like us – our idea of what a Christian is – our idea of what a brother or sister is. The ones calling themselves Christ, that call themselves Christians, are upset because prayer has been taken from the schools and God is being removed from public life in the country founded on freedom. Christians, or those using that name, have judged those around them and are now upset because the promise of Jesus is coming, “judge not, that you be not judged; for with the judgement you judge, you will be judged.” And those that you judged are now your judges. The gays that you cursed and beat and the women that you cursed at the doors of the clinics are now your judges. The doctors that you hated and bombed are now your judges. Jesus asked us to bless and to pray for them and we cursed and beat and killed them. Pray now, “where He sends me, I will follow.”
The Lord has been long suffering with us as we have been short tempered with those that do not fit our mold and as we have been blind to those that share our guilt. Do we give comfort to the ill or food to the fatherless? We curse the ill for their sickness and blame their sins for our troubles. We blame the fatherless for their losses and use their mothers in ways that we would not use our own wives. We hold so dearly to the rich that take the bread from our children’s mouths and turn our eyes from those made poor and mad by the greed of the rich. The rich are so grand in their cars and outward lives, giving to each other the things that they could buy for themselves and crumbs to those that can only afford crumbs. Let a rich minister come to your town with the brass band and talk of the brass ring and we give to them our time and monies. But what of the minister that is serving the needs of the poor communities? Do we go to see them speak or give to them? The believers, with skin tones different from our own, that we burned out of their meeting halls and kept out of ours are now our judges. The Lord has been long suffering with us.
The oath that we make with our actions does not match the oath that we made when we called to Jesus to bring us into the Christ. We may not have spoken it with our mouths but with our coming to the Christ we accepted the commandment to love one another as Jesus loves us. Jesus loves us while we are sinners and dies for us while we were still in sin that we might overcome. If Jesus was to come upon a group of young men preparing to beat a homosexual, do you think he would join in the beating or bend down and begin writing in the dirt with His finger? If Jesus was to come upon a group of women preparing to bomb a clinic, do you think he would join in or bend down and write in the dirt? When we were told to judge not, do you think we were only suppose to stop judging the one seated next to us in the pew? Our actions do not match the light that Jesus called us into.
Turn your heart now away from the fears of your own weakness and listen to the spirit of forgiveness and of love. Forgive yourself of the things that blind you to the love that gives comfort to those seeking as well as to those that are lost. Accept the Jesus that calls us into the Christ and be forgiven. Pray for those that you have harmed and those that have done you harm. Become part of the Christ and feel the spirit flow through you to another. Listen to the teachings of the spirit of forgiveness and of love. “Where He sends me, I will follow.” Listen to Jesus and follow Him!
© 1999 Tim D. Coulter Sr.