Passage: 1 Corinthians 16:1-24
Well it’s been two weeks since I last blogged. I’ve been barely keeping my head above water with the end of the teaching year approaching and my piano/harp recital coming up. I will be glad when it’s all done so I can blog blog blog all summer long!
This past Sunday our pastor Dr. Paul Little spoke about the passage we read last week, 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. Some of the things that he mentioned really spoke to me and are still sitting on my heart this week as I read chapter 16.
Last Saturday evening we had our new worship pastor over for dinner and after hearing about some of the things my husband and I have been through he politely asked if we ever wondered why us? Why does God allow one couple do go through so much. The next day at Church I was very encouraged to hear Dr. Paul Little’s message. His points were: Accept the necessity of your death, Anticipate the hope to come, and Experience the resurrection now. I believe that God has allowed us to grow through a lot because we don’t keep quite about what we’re dealing with and we share our struggles and our victories openly and honestly with others. People learn from people and whatever it is we go through we learn so much along the way and try to share it with others. It’s not only encouraging to us to see how others are able to benefit from our experiences but it helps put it into perspective for our own walk of faith too. We can survive our trials because we anticipate the hope to come and accept God’s will for our lives and want to live and experience the resurrection now.
The verses that has stuck with me from this weeks passage were 1 Corinthians 16:10 and 13, 14.
10 When Timothy comes, don’t intimidate him. He is doing the Lord’s work, just as I am. 11 Don’t let anyone treat him with contempt. Send him on his way with your blessing when he returns to me. I expect him to come with the other believers.
13 Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. 14 And do everything with love.
I found it interesting that Paul asks them not to intimidate Timothy. It got me thinking about how we can intimidate each other. Whether we do it on purpose or unconscionably others are affected. We all need to be careful about how our actions can have such a huge effect on not only others but their work for Christ and how God intends to use that person or how God intended to use that person before we intimidated them. I have trouble over thinking about what others may be thinking. So even when someone is not even saying or doing anything to intimidate me I feel intimidated. If I allowed intimidation to get to me I would not have even started this blog but I trust in God for direction and not in my fickle heart or how intimidated I feel. I not only need to be careful not to intimidate others but also not to allow myself to get intimidated.
This is definitely an area that I am working on. I am trying to look more approachable and be more approachable because my husband says that I can be very intimidating. I’m not sure if it’s my facial expressions or how easy I find it to talk and get personal with people perhaps before they are willing to get personal with me 🙂 Whatever it is I am praying that God will help me work on this and that I would be more encouraging and less intimidating to others. For me the thing that intimidates me the most is the devil. When I am about to ‘minister’ to someone the devil puts awful thoughts in my head like, ‘Don’t both it won’t help them’ ‘They’ve heard it before’ ‘Why would they care about hearing your story’ ‘You have really no idea what you’re talking about even though you think God has put that on your heart to say so don’t embarrass yourself’
When the devil is attacking me like this that’s when I need to apply verse 13. Some days we need this verse more than others but if we are going to live boldly and die well than we should memorize it.
Verse 14 ” And do everything with love.” This is an awesome verse. I love how in verse 13 it’s all about ‘Be, Be and Be’ but don’t bother to ‘BE’ anything if you don’t do it with love. Just lately I was recalling one of my favorite summer jobs I had as a nanny at a gorgeous home with a pool and three great kids. I recalled how much it paid and laughed out loud but I’d do it all over again if I had to because it was fun and I LOVED it and I LOVED the kids. Lately I have been doing a lot of ‘pruning’ in my life. Just contemplating what direction I should go and praying about it and asking God to give me clear direction I truly believe He reminded me of this job because that’s all that matters is “do everything with love”. So even though some of the ideas I have are taking me in directions where I may not make much $$$ I LOVE doing what I am doing and while I am pruning away God has been blessing me in other areas I never thought were possible. I don’t like change and the ‘pruning’ has been so hard and I have had to make some tough choices but I am so thankful that I have my heavenly Father who knows my heart and has been blessing me as an encouragement and reassuring me that I am ‘cutting off’ the right branches.
I have had my interview at the hospital last week and am doing orientation next week. I won’t make any money playing for patients as I do when I play for brides. I was beginning to feel slightly guilty about dedicating a whole morning every week to play harp for patients at no cost instead of finding more work, but thank you Lord for that verse! ” And do everything with love.”
Think about what you love to do and how it can help others and bring glory to God. Really it’s the answer to the purpose of our lives as Christians. If you have any ‘pruning’ to do in order for you to possibly make room/time for this to happen than I encourage you to do so. It’s working very well for me!
In the clay,
Chantal Dube