Lift Him Up!

     Oswald Chambers caught my attention the other day by addressing a subject that I have spent some quality time thinking about due to some personal situations.  Honestly, I had been hit hard by someone claiming to be a fellow believer.  Whenever this has happens to me, it causes me to reexamine from scripture why do I believe what I believe.  With this in mind, let's listen to Mr. Chambers...from approximately 1915. :)  He begins on December 20 by saying, "Very few of us have a real understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died.  If sympathy is all human beings need then the cross of Christ is a farce, there is no need for it.  What the world needs is not "a little bit of love", but a surgical operation.  If you can help others by your sympathy or understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ.  You have to keep your soul rightly related to God and pour out to others on His line, not pour out on the human line and ignore God.  The great note today is amiable religiosity."
     I would submit to you that this is true today as well as in the early 1900's.  In our humanness, we want to tell people just to clean up the outside a little bit.  Most of us are not willing to be patient and loving enough to to ask questions that will dig deeper to uncover what is really going on in a person's heart so they will begin to see for themselves the great need they have for a daily savior.  I have heard repeatedly that you are not able to help others unless you have been through what they have or you do not have the same problems.  If this were true, the the perfect ONE could not help any of us.  It is agreed upon as comforting when someone shares the same problems as we have and is able to understand us better.  However, the people who have helped me the most have been those who will point me back to the cross (the gospel) in my times of trouble or failure.  Some of these folks do not have anything 'earthly' in common with me.
     Back to Chambers:  "The one thing we have to do is to exhibit Jesus Christ crucified, to lift Him up all the time.  Every doctrine that is not embedded in the cross of Jesus Christ will lead astray."  This leads me to II Timothy 4:2-5 where Paul charges Timothy and us..."preach the word, be ready in season and out of season;  reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.  For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and turn away from listening to the truth and wonder off into myths.  As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."  No matter what your past, your occupation, your gender, this is your calling!  Oswald says, "The calling of a New Testament worker is to uncover sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Savior, consequently he cannot be poetical, he must be sternly surgical.  We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ not to give wonderfully beautiful discourses.  We have to probe straight down as deeply as God has probed us, to be keen in sensing the scripture which brings the truth straight home and to apply them fearlessly!"
    One of the hot topics today is 'sexuality'.  This teaching is clearly taught throughout the the Bible.  However, for many people, to discuss this truth means judging.  Recently this has been on my mind while talking with a friend privately who wanted to know what I thought about her pursuing a lesbian relationship.    Patiently, we discussed it.  She told me that she had recently surrendered her life to Christ by realizing she was a sinner.  I sensed a need to probe and ask her what she thought her sins were at the time.  She stated  adultery and anger.  I asked her why she thought the two mentioned were sins.  Hopefully, you get my point.  God states in His WORD what He calls sin.  It's not my call.  Either we believe His WORD or we do not.  I have been praying for my friend and I love her and believe with all my heart that she loves me or she would not have trusted me with her question.    My call is to obey God and to lift up the name of Jesus, the NAME above all names!  And, at the end of the day...He will be glorified!