Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Tuesday 10/05/2010)

What Have You Done For Me Lately?...

Matthew 25:34-40 (Amplified Bible)

³⁴Then the King will say to those at His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father [you favored of God and appointed to eternal salvation], inherit (receive as your own) the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you brought Me together with yourselves and welcomed and entertained and lodged Me, ³⁶I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me with help and ministering care, I was in prison and you came to see Me. ³⁷Then the just and upright will answer Him, Lord, when did we see You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink? ³⁸And when did we see You a stranger and welcomed and entertained You, or naked and clothed You? ³⁹And when did we see You sick or in prison and came to visit You? ⁴⁰And the King will reply to them, Truly I tell you, in so far as you did it for one of the least [in the estimation of men] of these My brethren, you did it for Me.

Sunday, my sister and I joined her sorority sisters on an MS walk. As we stood out in the cold and rain, uncomfortable and close to miserable, one of the women who were the mistresses of ceremony said something, thought provoking, she said, “think of why you would be out her walking on this cold and rainy day?” My mind immediately went to a friend that has MS, and the struggles her body has encountered and then to another friend who has battled and beat cancer but still has fibromyalgia, and another friend who has many things wrong in her body, but has suffered several strokes and is battling stage three cancer. I thought of how just moments before I was complaining of being pelleted by the rain and being cold, but even though I have suffered in my body several infirmities, that I still had the ability to go out and walk for someone who could not. Immediate the scripture above in Matthew read through my heart. I felt like crying from shame first and then because I knew that it was my duty to do and be in operation for someone else because my Heavenly Father asked me to.

Now many of us take our lives for granted on a daily basis. We moan and groan and complain about being uncomfortable or not having as much as we like. We grumble about little aches and pains and things that do not go our way during the day. All of the while forgetting that there are so many others so much worse off than we are. We take our lives and the blessings that we have for granted. We cry when people do not like us, or people do not agree with us. We want to stretch out in the floor and kick and scream because some plan that we had is not working out the way we mapped it out in our minds. But truth be told, what if in all our complaining God decided to take our blessings away and really allow us to see what it is like to be in a place of lack, need or suffering. Until we decide to look at things with new eyes we will never be able to see that we need to be proactive, and not reactive… That we need to take the strength, power, resources, and talents that we have and take care of someone else. That we need to have a heart that desires loves and aspires to serve. We need to get to the place where we can begin to feel the heartbeat of God and take care of those who cause the beat of His heart.

We look for all the wrong that is and all the things that we don’t have instead of all that we do. We should really start to evaluate more closely, how blessed we are and how much we have to give. And not what we do not have. For it is in our giving, our serving, our loving, our visiting, our caring for and our sowing into that we are doing the will of the Father and that we will see ourselves in a place of blessing and know that we have done what the Father has desired for us to do. It should not be about the “My Ways,” “Their ways.” It should be about hitting the “Highways” and the “Byways” where needs are plenty but laborers are few! Step away from the selfishness and into the a place of service!