Well, hello there again! I hope everyone has been enjoying their weeks. Here's another post from yours truly! I hope that you enjoy it! This post is all about the main session messages that we heard week four of VBLT 2013.
This week, for us Ball Staters, we got a little taste of home. The speaker of the week was one of our very own: Carl Frost.
He is one of the full-time teaching pastors back in Muncie, and he is one of the most emotive speakers I think I have heard. Every time his messages happen, it is impossible to not think hard about what was communicated and ultimately to FEEL God move through him. It's pretty wild and awesome. He has a wonderful family, Carolyn (wife of 6 years now I believe), his son Lincoln (currently 4 years old), and young daughter Lily (two years old recently). He has a spectacular personality, loves to watch movies with emotional scenes in them, has mean guitar skills and loves playing/watching basketball. But aside from all of that, he has a magnificent heart for the Lord that always manages to shine whenever we are together.
Monday night this week was no different. Carl Spoke on one of the most popular stories that Jesus has ever told: the parable of the Good Samaritan.
"One one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. 'Teacher,' he asked, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?'
'What is written in the Law?' Jesus replied, 'how do you read it?'
"He answered: 'Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, love your neighbor as yourself.'
'You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Do this and you will live.'
"But he (the expert of the law) wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'
In reply Jesus said: 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They striped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
"Which of these do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?'
"The expert of the law replied, 'The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, 'go and do likewise."
Now, for me, something that I have been learning more and more about this summer as I go through all of these parables is that Jesus (as well as any other major person in the Bible honestly) always have very short stories yet very HEAVY amounts of information that make me realize just how much I missed out on when I have gone through it on my own. I have read most of them multiple times, but the insight from the different speakers has been a huge blessing in itself, because a deeper understanding of God has surfaced from it all. And for that I am truly thankful.
But in the case of this story in particular, a lot is going on that really can relate to the way we live our lives here and now.
The road to Jerusalem was a sketchy place, similar to the areas that we find very shady in our local cities all around the United States. Three people pass by this innocent bystander that gets abused and left for dead. And from the looks of it, you would think that the first two (a priest and a Levite, two very devout people to the Lord) would have stopped to help this poor man. But they don't, for whatever reason. Perhaps it is out of fear, out of avoidance, etc. But most likely, it was because those people had a schedule to keep and were in a hurry to get to their next obligation.
Now, what about a Samaritan? What is so special about them? Why are they so bad? Well...back in this time during Jesus' ministry, the Samaritans were considered to be the spiritual half-breeds of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So essentially, they were simply the ones that society deemed as the sketchy ones that would never make it in the world. Or at least, that's how I took it. So it was shocking that a Samaritan would be the one that would stop and help this person out, especially when the people that we would expect in society end up "passing by on the other side."
So, Carl put it to really good perspective with a more modern style story to apply this very story into our lives.
1) The road between Jerusalem and Jericho --- the club scene in VB
2) The Priest --- us LTers
3) The Levite --- students with Campus Crusade on their summer project
4) The Samaritan --- the guy who just escaped a one-night stand half drunk
So, how this all plays out is this. Say a guy gets beat up in a dark alley on the strip of Virginia Beach, and he gets left there bloody and left basically naked. Then, an LTer (the priest) getting off of work late walks by and sees him laying there, but thinks 'man, I really have to get back. It's past my curfew and if I stop I'm going to be super late.' So he keeps on going. Shortly after, a girl on project with CRU walks by on the way home from sharing her faith on the boardwalk (the Levite), and she sees the man laying there. Worried, she thinks 'that guy looks hurt, but the situation looks dangerous. What if I go and the same thing happens to me?" So, she too leaves. Then, the guy heading home after a quick one-night stand after a party walks by drunk, and sees the guy. He stops, goes to see if the guy needs help, moves him to one of the local hotels, pays for a room for him for the night and tells the manager: "if you need anything else after tonight and he still needs help, I will pay for it. Just make sure he is ok."
That story threw us all for a loop. And the point of the story was to not convict us because of our ignorance of the situation. It was simply to show us just how easy it is for us to overlook many situations where people simply need help. And the moral of the story was this: to show mercy and compassion to those who really need it in their lives. The man simply needed help in time of physical and financial need.
"Jesus has an extremely skilled ability to turn theological questions into a discussion about real-life issues." -Carl Frost
Carl also said this: "One cannot define who one's neighbor is. One can only simply BE a neighbor."
Truth. Right there. Plain and simple. It's hard, absolutely. But it's a necessary thing that we have to recognize in our lives. We need to love those that we may not know or even want to love. It's what we have been called to do in every circumstance in our lives. That is why Jesus ends by saying in Luke 10:37 "Go and do likewise."
Being unable to love others usually happens not because we don't want to, but because we're caught up in our own individual worlds and always concerned about ourselves. This message challenges our passivity and gives us the chance from now on to put that compassion into action. It reminds me of something that I read recently in A.W Tozer's book "The attributes of God." In one of the chapters, he talks about the difference between compassion as a noun and compassion as a verb. The noun compassion means to have a feeling of mercy and empathy towards someone that you hear about. Compassion as a verb actually means to compassionate. This means that those feelings of empathy lead a person to actually DO something about the situation at hand.
I struggle so much with this in my life. I love to love people. I don't do it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but I still enjoy doing it when I can. I'm always learning more about myself through the successes and failures that I have in my life when it comes to giving and even receiving love. But it's true, I do such a poor job because I'm caught up in my own schedule, always worrying about the next thing I have to do, and not paying attention to those around me that need so much more than I do at any given time. I have to pray that I have a stronger sense of observation. I have to pray that God may give me stronger eyes to see people that need God and his love and the ears to hear the cries of those who are lost and who are broken. Our love is imperfect, but God's love is never failing.
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we out to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." -1 John 3:16-18
No comments:
Post a Comment