I love the passion with which my man preaches. It's amazing to me that after so many years he still gets up every sunday with that much fire and passion and excitement. That has to be the love for Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit!!
Eddie preached on peace yesterday in Ephesians 2. How awesome that God just brought us to that passage with the week's world events. He spoke of wars that go on in society and sadly even churches and families. I loved how he preached with transparency. We are all so guilty at times of wearing masks and wanting others to think that all is well when in reality there are wars going on in our lives. One side note that I got this week personally in my study time is how we can choose peace with others even when they continue to war against us!! The answer can be shake the dust, refuse to fight back, pray and walk away. Back to the sermon...
Eddie focused a lot on the racial problems between the Jews and Gentiles and the walls that divide us and cause hostility. The walls that make us think we are better than others. Jesus came to tear those walls down! Laws and rules put up barriers but love tears them down.
Last night as a family we decided to rent a movie. We rented 42, the Jackie Robinson movie. I didn't think about it at the time but the more I watched the movie the more I thought about this sermon. The walls and hate that for so long didn't allow black athletes to play baseball in a "whites only" league and the love of one man determined to tear those walls down. How thankful I am for that!! Anyone who knows us at all knows that baseball is the sport of choice for us since our boys have played so much of it. I can't imagine them playing in a time like Robinson played. I used to say that our boys didn't see color. I don't think it's that they didn't see it but that they saw it and could appreciate it. Baseball was something that enabled them to play with all different races, backgrounds without giving it much thought. But it wasn't always like that. Thankfully, one man was tired of the wall that divided and chose to do whatever he had to to tear that wall down and, at least the way the movie portrayed it, it was motivated by love and biblical standards.
My prayer is that as believers we would continue to see the walls that divide us and do whatever has to be done to tear them down motivated by a love for Jesus and a love for others. Let's not be the haters. Let's be the ones always reaching out and across lines that divide. And we don't have to be screaming hate to take part in it. Sometimes our silence hurts just as much.
My husband issued a great challenge in regard to numbers. Will we take that challenge? Will we spend this week inviting people? Will we invite our friends? Will we invite those who may not be our friend...yet? Will we reach out and invite someone who may be different from us? Someone that we "happen" to run in
to that we normally wouldn't even consider inviting. How bout we tear down some walls this week and invite someone that normally we never would. It starts with love. When we love God like we are called to He will enable us to love others and love them enough to care about where they spend eternity. Like Eddie said, every person has a soul and every soul will spend all of eternity somewhere, heaven or hell. Let's see people the way Jesus sees them and take a risk, step outside our comfort zone, and invest in someone, invite someone!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment