Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Friday 01/13/2012)

Is Your Presence Requested

Psalm 41:11-13 Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹¹By this I know that You favor and delight in me, because my enemy does not triumph over me. ¹²And as for me, You have upheld me in my integrity and set me in Your presence forever. ¹³Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting and to everlasting [from this age to the next, and forever]! Amen and Amen (so be it).
            The way we live our lives is our calling card.  It is our message of integrity and our appreciation to God for the life that He has given us.  My mother is an extraordinary woman, and she seems to meet or run into people she knows everywhere we go.  I was the strangest thing to be in Hawaii, and for he to run into someone she had taught.  It is even stranger that no matter where we go children migrate to her, and her smiles always seems to return a response in kind or a start of a conversation.  I am not sure my mom has any enemies; it would be hard to hate her unless you are just a demon straight from the pit of hell.  She has adopted children from former students she has taught to coworkers to friends she has met and people who have lacked a parental figure in their lives.  My mother was recently out of school for an extended period of time.  Although people understood her need to be absent and that she needed that time, her coworkers called her almost daily or stopped by the house to tell her they sorely missed her and needed her back at work, not because no one could do her job like her, although that is truth as well, but because no one smiled, made them laugh, or hugged and encouraged them daily as she does.  Her presence was being requested, because of who she is.
            How are you living your life?  Are you missed when you are absent from your job, school, or social gatherings, or does the way you live your life make it easy for people around you to ignore your absence or celebrate it?  Is your attitude one that boast of self preservation and ensuring you are okay, before you reach out for anyone else.  Even on His way to the cross Jesus was still giving of himself and ministering.    Last week i\even in my mothers grief I heard her ministering to others, praying for others and loving others as if she herself wasn’t hurt, could this be you? I must admit, I have not quite arrived, I have work to do.  We are called to give of ourselves.  So many times we take on the attitude of the world that we must adapt the attitude of self preservation, but that is not what Jesus showed us as an example, His whole life was sacrificial in nature, even through His process of death.  I had a conversation with someone who told me I better save myself that I was too nice and I needed to start taking people down and forcing people’s hand; that I need to demand justice in my life from those who had done me wrong, or hurt and abused me. I was stunned, but as I prayed later I understood that to be in the world demands that we save us first, if you look at every great Biblical figure even through their own hurt, distress and misgivings they still did what they were called to do and they in many cases went above. Even when they made mistakes they still pressed on to try again.
            The integrity of who we are is in how we live.  Will God be carrying us into His presence, because of how we live?  Will people need us and lean upon us even when we are not 100 percent because of the person that we have become to them, and the person that they know that they have become to us?  It is all in our living, in our giving of ourselves to the ministry and mission of God and to those who God entrust in our lives.  I remember a line from the movie Scrooged where a giving character was told to “scrape people off before they pulled her down.”  I s this who you are, or have you asked God to show you your assignment and have you stuck to it at all cost, even when others told you differently, or by the world’s standards you were thought crazy to care for others when you were wounded yourself? Are you being called, needed wanted, or forgotten, and celebrated in your absences? It is all in how you are living and how you allow Christ to be alive through you!  Will your presence be one requested or denied by how you live?