Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from the “Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide” is titled “Mission to the Powerful”. God holds no distinctions between rank or class. The “Rich and Famous” can be lonely, and destitute of true friends, like the rest of us. They may grieve and suffer, like the rest of us. Their wealth may make them proud and self-secured (all of us can relate to pride). All of us can be obsessed with possessions…especially those who have few. Possessions are not forbidden by our Lord. But they must be placed in perspective. Material goods are God’s instruments designed to benefit our lives as we seek to benefit the lives of our fellow-men. We are to work so “that (we) may have something to give him who has need” (Ephesians 4:8). Possessions become blessings when shared rather than hoarded. When hoarded, they become curses.
So, as we think of reaching and discipling the “Rich and Famous”, we need to be careful that we do not generalize. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we are counseled to listen to others. This way we will not assume we know their hearts, their motivation, even their weaknesses. Only by listening do we come into some understanding of them. And then, with the prompting of the Holy Spirit of Love, we will see a way to best reach and disciple. It may even be that rather than offer them what we have, we ask of them (as Christ did to Zacchaeus).
All of us are tempted with the same temptation, adapted in various ways by the enemy of our souls to best appeal to us. At its core, Satan tempts us to be our own god; to save our own souls, to be the master of ourselves…at any cost. We will strive and search and hoard and do anything towards that end except the one thing that will bring us to our true selves; bring us back to the self that was created in God’s image. That one thing is to die to self with Christ. This self-surrender is the principal upon which all heaven functions. The only platform upon which real love can develop. The only platform upon which we find our true selves.
We are counseled to “…not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thief’s break-in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break-in and steal. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6: 19-21). We are thus admonished, not because treasure on earth is transient and worthless (which it is), but because where our treasure is there will our heart be. We were created to soar into the stratosphere of self-sacrificing love with our Father and Brother. “Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken and we have escaped.” (Psalm 124: 7). Our hearts were meant to treasure love and truth and to expand to unlimited capacity and nobility. But when our treasure is on earth, we take ourselves, our hearts and bury them in the “earth” away from the “light” of Love; where our hearts rust and corrode and become small and polluted. Eventually we will even become unable to soar with God or even appreciate the things of God. A pitiful condition where love and truth fail to impress and we are almost beyond hope.
Such is the danger of the power and fame of riches, the danger of worshipping “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life… (the things) not of the Father but of this world”. (1 John 2:16). May we ever keep our eyes on the simple and lofty things of God and shun the showy and low things of this earth, is my prayer for us all.
Brotherly,
Jim