The God Who Won’t Give Up
Not everyone in Jesus’ world gave him a warm welcome. Not everyone received him with grace. And many didn’t just ignore him, they rejected him.
Isaiah prophesied his reception like this: “He was despised and rejected by men” (Isa. 53:3 NIV).
John summarized the rejection of Jesus with these words: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:10-11 NIV).
How did Christ endure treatment like that? At any point he could have said, “I quit. I’ve had enough.” Why didn’t he? What kept him from giving up?
I wonder if Lee Lelpi understands the answer? He is a retired firefighter, a New York City firefighter. He gave twenty-six years to the city. But on September 11, 2001, he gave much more. He gave his son. Jonathan Lelpi was a fireman as well. When the Twin Towers fell, he was there.
Firefighters are a loyal clan. When one perishes in the line of duty, the body is left where it is until a firefighter who knows the person can come and quite literally pick it up. Le made the discovery of his son’s body his personal mission. He dug daily with dozens of others at the sixteen-acre graveyard. One Tuesday, December 11, three months after the disaster, his son was found. And Lee was there to carry him out.
He didn’t give up. The father didn’t quit. He refused to turn and leave. Why? Because his love for his son was greater than the pain of the search. Can’t the same be said about Christ? Why didn’t he quit? Because the love for his children was greater than the pain of the journey. He came to pull you out. Your world had collapsed. That’s why he came. You were dead, dead to sin. That’s why he came. He loves you. That’s why he came.
That’s why he endured the distance between us. “Love…endures all things.”
That’s why he endured the resistance from us. “Love…endures all things.”
That’s why he went the final step of the incarnation: “God made him who had not sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21 NIV).
Why did Jesus do that? There is only one answer. And that answer has one word. Love. And that love of Christ “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7 NKJV).
Think about that for a moment. Drink from that for a moment. Drink deeply. Don’t just sip or nip. It’s time to gulp. It’s time to let his love cover all things in your life. All secrets. All hurts. All hours of evil, minutes of worry.
The mornings you awoke in the bed of a stranger? His love will cover that. The years you peddled prejudice and pride? His love will cover that. Every promise broken, drug taken, penny stolen. Every cross word, cuss word, and harsh word. His love covers all things.
Let it. Discover along with the psalmist. “He…loads me with love and mercy” (Ps. 103:4). Picture a giant dump truck full of love. There you are behind it. God lifts the bed until the love starts to slide. Slowly at first, then down, down, down until you are hidden, buried, covered in his love.
“Hey, where are you?” someone asks.
“In here, covered in love.”
Let his love cover all things.
Do it for his sake. To the glory of his name.
Do it for your sake. For the peace of your heart.
And do it for their sake. For the people in your life. Let his love fall on you so yours can fall on them.
Excerpted from A Love Worth Giving
W Publishing, 2002
Available for purchase at MaxLucado.com
CC, BCC, Security and email Hoaxes
You know you’ve done it … received an email and then copied (CC’d) everyone in your contact list of the latest “get rich”, “sick child”, “lost inheritance”, “help us get our money into the United States”, “the latest email virus going around”, “how to save gas”, “toxic fumes in new cars” and a host of other things that clog up your and your friends (after you send it to them!) email inboxes!
A little pre-sending investigation can usually help you decide if you REALLY want to forward this to everyone or not. Go to http://www.snopes.com/ and enter just a small part of the email subject in the search box and you will likely see that there MIGHT be some truth in the email you are about to forward to over 100 people, but more than likely you will find it is rife with errors and misinformation. Imagine how much better you would feel NOT sending out that to all your friends (and doing so may cause them to become you “ex-friends”!).
And IF you then decide to send it, by all means DON’T CC everyone! BCC them! Why? … read on!
What is CC and what is BCC you ask?
CC – Carbon Copy
BCC – Blind Carbon Copy
When to use CC vs BCC?
CC: Well let’s say you are working with a group on a project at work. When you send an email to “John” on your team and then CC the rest of the team, you are communicating to John that you want him to do or know something. The CC is to let everyone on the team know that John is taking care of the particular request you have made. John, and everyone in the CC list, will know who got a copy of the message.
BCC: Now let’s take the same scenario and send John and email and BCC the team. Now, everyone gets a copy of the email but it looks like it was sent to JUST THEM adn John … not a long list of people!
I usually send an email to one person and CC others. What I am communicating is that I expect a response or action from the person I sent the email to. The people CC’d inthe lsit is just information so they know I am “doing my job”. If I need to let someone know, but not the person I am sending the email to, I use BCC. For example, if someone asks me for a persons email address, I will reply that I don;t normally give out someones address without asking them permission first. I woudl replay to the person making the request and BCC the person they are asking the email address for. That way, I am answering the person who is asking for the email and also letting the person know someone was aslking for their email address.
How’s all this related tp Security?
Sending emails to your friends and associates by BCC does not expose their address to the rest of your list. There are a couple of issues in using BCC to keep in mind:
Privacy: By sending BCC, you are hiding your recipients’ email addresses and not exposing them to everyone else. When a message isn’t BCC’d, everyone sees the response when someone “replies to all”, and you get this never-ending deluge of emails (usually about something you don’t in the least care about). By putting your recipients in BCC you do eliminate that problem. In essence you are keeping your list of recipients confidential. It is not perfect but is the best we have.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: In our most intrusive world, it has become more and more important to have good manners and respect your friends and associates. CCing them opens their addresses to being harvested by others (read SPAMMERS here!) Encourage your friends to use BCC as the address you protect may be your own.
And one last note, if you need to reply and there are lots of people CC’d on the email, think before you send: Do you really want everyone to see the response? It’s often far better etiquette to simply choose “Reply” (as opposed to “Reply All”), and have the response go to the sender, not everyone copied. Or, just copy the people you want to have see the response.
Why should Christians go to church? How important is it?
Some people joke about the “Bedside Baptists” who attend the “Chapel of the Tube” on Sunday mornings. But it’s more than a joke. Many people refuse to get near a church unless their nephew is playing the role of a sheep in the Christmas pageant! They claim they can get more out of a walk in the woods than from the typical sermon.
Can a Christian survive apart from a church? Some Christians have no choice. They are trapped in a hospital bed, or working in an isolated area where no church exists. And God is certainly sufficient to care for their needs. You can still get to heaven if you can’t go to church.
But even though it’s technically possible to live the Christian life in isolation, it’s certainly not the norm.
When you become a Christian, you are called into a relationship with God (1 Corinthians 1:9). But I John 1:3 makes it clear that we enter a fellowship that goes two ways: with God and with other Christians.
The New Testament never divides Christians into the church members and the non-church members. All the way through, it assumes that everybody participates in their local assembly. It gives no samples of Christians who belong to the “universal church” but have no link with a local church. One scholar has said that “any idea…of enjoying salvation or being a Christian in isolation is foreign to the New Testament writings” (Alan Stibbs, God’s Church, p. 92). Wherever Christians are within range of each other in the New Testament, they meet. Every time the apostle Paul comes to a town in the book of Acts where there are no Christians, he wins a few converts and immediately organizes them into a small group – a little church.
Acts 20:7 reveals the practice of the early church: “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached to them.” For Christians in every location, regular gathering was a part of life.
It’s illogical to say that you are merely part of the worldwide, universal church, yet refuse to gather with the segment of that universal church that exists in your geographical area. It would be like claiming you have a car, when the right fender is in Phoenix, the engine is in Tucson, and the wheels are in Paradise Valley! You don’t have a car; you have the beginning of the inventory for a junkyard. It just won’t function until the pieces are put together.
The church must be together to carry out many of its purposes.
Here are some irreplaceable pieces of the Christian that cannot happen when you live in isolation from the church:
- USE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS – I Corinthians 12 makes it clear that God has given spiritual gifts to every Christian. And verse 7 states unmistakably that these abilities are not provided to make you feel good; they are abilities to minister that should be used for the common good! I Peter 4:10 commands us to use spiritual gifts to help each other.The same passage makes it clear that we meet with other Christians so they can use their gifts to strengthen us. God’s gift of a preacher or teacher is wasted if no one comes to hear them speak.
- MUTUAL MINISTRY – The church is pictured as a body in I Corinthians 12, and Paul explains that each part of the body exists to meet the needs of other body parts. In the same way, God intends each of us to meet the needs of other believers, using our strengths to help in their areas of weakness. I Corinthians 12:21 expresses it this way: “The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.” Neither can a Christian claim to be self-sufficient today.The New Testament is full of “one another” commands. We are to comfort one another (I Thessalonians 4:18), build up one another (I Thessalonians 5:11), confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), pray for one another (James 5:16), and many more. How can we obey these directives if we stay away from the gathering of believers?
- ACCOUNTABILITY – God designed the church as a place where spiritual leaders could watch out for our welfare, as a shepherd guards the sheep (I Peter 5:1-4; Hebrews 13:17). A Christian who answers only to himself can easily rationalize sinful attitudes or actions; regular contact with other Christians can keep us sharp.
A single verse should actually be sufficient answer for this question: Hebrews 10:25 warns its readers against “forsaking the assembly of yourselves together, as the manner of some is.”
Author: Dr. John Bechtle.