Gtcotr/ws040214
Many
times I am asked the question: “What can I do about my family”; or “What can I
do for my family”; or “How can I help my family”?
Without
regard as to whether or not your family members are connected to God, the
number one thing you can do to help them; to encourage them; to meet their
needs or be a continual blessing to them is for you to live your life as a true
reflection of God. We have the most impact on others when our life reflects the
love, the kindness, the mercy and the justice of God. Unless and until God
holds a commanding place in our lives we should not imagine that we are
convincing or convicting others to choose Him. Why should others in our family
be devoted to God when we are not?
God
chose us so that we might show Him to others.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are
a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people,
that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into
His marvelous light.
The
Apostle Peter wrote this after having had a revelation given to him by the Holy
Spirit. Once Peter imagined that only the Jews were special and that only the
Jews were God’s chosen people. After the revelation Peter received from God in
a vision at Joppa and then seeing the fulfillment of that vision the next day
in Caesarea, as recorded in Acts 10, Peter understood that all who call upon
the name of the Lord are accepted by God and welcomed into His family. Each
born again child of God is chosen and special.
Peter
did not just make up these words … rather the Holy Spirit illuminated and
confirmed words which had been given through the prophet Moses to the Children
of God centuries earlier. Let’s look at those words from:
Deuteronomy 7
6 "For you are a
holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a
people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the
earth.
7 "The LORD did not set
His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other
people, for you were the least of all peoples;
8 "but because the LORD
loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers,
the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the
house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 "Therefore know that
the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and
mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His
commandments;
10 "and He repays
those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with
him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face.
11 "Therefore you shall
keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you
today, to observe them.
12 ¶ "Then it shall come
to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the
LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to
your fathers.
13 "And He will love you
and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and
the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase
of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore
to your fathers to give you.
14 "You shall be blessed
above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or
among your livestock.
15 "And the LORD will
take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible
diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those
who hate you.
The
best way to help your family is to live your life in a way that pleases God.
There is no better outreach to another individual than your personal testimony.
Nothing speaks as loud as the way you live your life.
Sometimes
we may wonder how we can be a better reflection of God …
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O
man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do
justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
If
we err in life, let us err on the side of grace …
