Welcome!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Today: Gospel according to me!
Passage: Galatians 1
11 I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Gal 1:11-12, NIV’84)
Paul clearly states that he received the gospel from God, and was delivering the exact same gospel to his listeners, without modifying it
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you:(1 Cor 11:23, NIV’84)
The word of God is the word of God. When we make changes to it for our convenience, it can no longer be called the word of God. It then becomes our word, or “the gospel according to me”!
But when the gospel is preached to a certain community or in a certain place, it is important to understand the context/beliefs/culture of the people
We can see that Paul was careful about the context where he was preaching
Paul never preached to please the Jews or gentiles; he never preached the kind of wisdom that gentiles would applaud, or encourage signs and wonders to please the Jews. But he always respected the listeners and avoided statements that would harm the relationship between the Church and the community
Love and compassion through Christ was and must be the basic factor of motivation for the messenger of the gospel
It is a strange thing to watch how some “Pastors” and “Churches” behave, here in the U.S
Yesterday, I read a that a church in Kansas is trying to picket the funeral of the nine year old girl who died in a shooting incident in Arizona few days back
Is that what Jesus called the Church for?
Few months back, there was another Pastor from Florida who said he was going to burn the Quran. That made big news
Much damage is done to the true church by this kind pastors and Churches, who have nothing to do with Jesus Christ
Devil is a schemer who gets people and leaders in the church to either compromise on the gospel or to become radicals like the pastor/church mentioned before
The other day I was reading the story of a fox and a crow, in a children’s story book. The fox wanted to get the food that was in the crow’s mouth. So the fox sang a song praising the beauty of the crow
The crow was so excited that it wanted to say something. As soon as it opened the mouth, the food went down and the fox got it!
The devil knows how to “get” the believers of God. He will use all the tricks to get them and their attention
It is very important for us to pray harder for the future of the Church in America; the word of God interpreted wrongly, can do much harm to the Church, than anything else that we could ever imagine
A witness of Christ is one who has really seen and experienced Christ
Even in good churches, people and leaders who never had a proper transformation/conversion experience in life, do the most damage
May God help you to keep your focus on Jesus and the true gospel
BG
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to stay committed to you and your word, and to discern the false teachings out there. Make me a person who will pray for Church in America and the rest of the world. Amen