- Dec 22, 2017
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A story with a story, than a talk on Scripture!
~~~~~
I just got done flipping through a biker magazine. The jokes were crude, the pictures of women are rather revealing, half the ads are for bars & strip clubs, and so on. But to really follow Jesus, should I have simply set down the magazine? Perhaps for someone weak in their spirituality, that would have been a good move. (Read 1 Corinthians for more of a description on the strong & weak of the faith). Yet God is everywhere, and we should always seek out His presence in any situation.
The back of the magazine had a short article about the power of prayer. It was written by a man with the Christian Motorcyclists Association*, and he described a miraculous healing of a broken-down Honda motorcycle on the side of the interstate. A man was stranded on the roadside, and the author of the article pulled over to help a fellow biker. Neither man could see any reason for the motorcycle to not start, but something wasn't working. The author said, "To be honest, I don't know much about Honda bikes, but I know someone who does." The stranded biker was bewildered at this comment. In the midst of the angry drivers going around them, and the other man's confusion & doubt, the author prayed with trust for a miraculous fix of the stranger's bike, for the sake of the stranger knowing that Jesus is the One True Lord, and gratitude for the prayer already being answered.
And...it was. The motorcycle started right away!
*www.cmausa.org
I do not simply share this as a great story of a prayer, though of course it is wonderful to hear of these things. The main reason I share this is to help people search out God in places that Christians generally reject. Throughout the magazine, must have celebrated, and so is drunkenness. Is this a good thing? Of course not. But something is bigger than our fallen nature; let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
God may not be present in the ways we can expect. Remember that Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who had 7 demons & quite the reputation for all the wrong reasons, became one of the closest disciples of Christ (she is widely believed to be the repentant woman in Luke 7). Peter, the figure of leadership among the Apostles, was a very crude and impulsive man. Filling any crude male stereotype, such as trucker or biker or factory grunt, and you have an idea of Peter. 11 of the apostles were cowards when it mattered most. Mark's gospel does a particularly good job of highlighting the failures and weaknesses in these men. Yet these are the ones Jesus chose. Why?
(Clues of these traits are given throughout the Bible, but Bill O'Reilly's great book Killing Jesus does a very good job of describing them).
I can't explain Jesus' reasoning for sure, but it seems as if He's trying to tell us to see the potential in everyone. If I acted like the apostles as they were following Jesus, I don't think I would be accepted to be a preacher or a minister of any kind. Yes Jesus loves all of his creation, and picked some of the weirdest people for the noblest of tasks. Uneducated, scared, messing up Jesus's teachings the whole way, but faithful. These are the ones who have kept God's word, Jesus says about them in John 17.
It's time we start looking for Jesus among the heavy metal fans, the bikers, the people who seems so different from our idea what Christians should look like. After all, these are the modern versions of the people Jesus reached out to with particular fervor. Divorced 6 times? There is still God. Lustful as can be? There is still God in them & they are loved by Him.
Don't let another person's sins blind you from being able to see God within them & loving them as He does. Consider your own sins, and imagine how you would treat somebody else with the same set of problems. Then look at the Crucifix, and find out how God treated you!
My God fill us with His grace; we need it.
,
~~~~~
I just got done flipping through a biker magazine. The jokes were crude, the pictures of women are rather revealing, half the ads are for bars & strip clubs, and so on. But to really follow Jesus, should I have simply set down the magazine? Perhaps for someone weak in their spirituality, that would have been a good move. (Read 1 Corinthians for more of a description on the strong & weak of the faith). Yet God is everywhere, and we should always seek out His presence in any situation.
The back of the magazine had a short article about the power of prayer. It was written by a man with the Christian Motorcyclists Association*, and he described a miraculous healing of a broken-down Honda motorcycle on the side of the interstate. A man was stranded on the roadside, and the author of the article pulled over to help a fellow biker. Neither man could see any reason for the motorcycle to not start, but something wasn't working. The author said, "To be honest, I don't know much about Honda bikes, but I know someone who does." The stranded biker was bewildered at this comment. In the midst of the angry drivers going around them, and the other man's confusion & doubt, the author prayed with trust for a miraculous fix of the stranger's bike, for the sake of the stranger knowing that Jesus is the One True Lord, and gratitude for the prayer already being answered.
And...it was. The motorcycle started right away!
*www.cmausa.org
I do not simply share this as a great story of a prayer, though of course it is wonderful to hear of these things. The main reason I share this is to help people search out God in places that Christians generally reject. Throughout the magazine, must have celebrated, and so is drunkenness. Is this a good thing? Of course not. But something is bigger than our fallen nature; let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
God may not be present in the ways we can expect. Remember that Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who had 7 demons & quite the reputation for all the wrong reasons, became one of the closest disciples of Christ (she is widely believed to be the repentant woman in Luke 7). Peter, the figure of leadership among the Apostles, was a very crude and impulsive man. Filling any crude male stereotype, such as trucker or biker or factory grunt, and you have an idea of Peter. 11 of the apostles were cowards when it mattered most. Mark's gospel does a particularly good job of highlighting the failures and weaknesses in these men. Yet these are the ones Jesus chose. Why?
(Clues of these traits are given throughout the Bible, but Bill O'Reilly's great book Killing Jesus does a very good job of describing them).
I can't explain Jesus' reasoning for sure, but it seems as if He's trying to tell us to see the potential in everyone. If I acted like the apostles as they were following Jesus, I don't think I would be accepted to be a preacher or a minister of any kind. Yes Jesus loves all of his creation, and picked some of the weirdest people for the noblest of tasks. Uneducated, scared, messing up Jesus's teachings the whole way, but faithful. These are the ones who have kept God's word, Jesus says about them in John 17.
It's time we start looking for Jesus among the heavy metal fans, the bikers, the people who seems so different from our idea what Christians should look like. After all, these are the modern versions of the people Jesus reached out to with particular fervor. Divorced 6 times? There is still God. Lustful as can be? There is still God in them & they are loved by Him.
Don't let another person's sins blind you from being able to see God within them & loving them as He does. Consider your own sins, and imagine how you would treat somebody else with the same set of problems. Then look at the Crucifix, and find out how God treated you!
My God fill us with His grace; we need it.
,
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