How beautiful the hands that served...!

I dedicate this blog to our Dear Achen Ninan & our Dear Pastor Sherwin...! Pastor, We appreciate you!

October.. is the 'CLERGY APPRECIATION' month! I am glad somebody had dedicated this WHOLE month for appreciating our pastors, instead of just one day! That shows us that one day is not enough to appreciate the Pastors!

Why should we appreciate our Pastors? The reasons are so many; I know I am trying a 'failure attempt' to write only a few things; they mean more than what these words can express!

While they are sick, they visit church members who are sick, to utter the words of assurance and healing, showing no signs of their own sufferings!

While they grieve for their personal situation, they go and celebrate the joyous occasion of the church members, showing no signs of their own pains!

While they need several helping hands, I have noticed, they go out and help the needy, showing no signs of self-needs, but just pointing to other's needs!

While they are 'stoned at' for anything they did, they pray for me and love me, as if I did nothing wrong against them.. oh boy.. this means a lot to me!

While they toil day and night to prepare the sermon and deliver it on Sundays, I just summarize them in one line saying 'it is not an effective sermon', because they don't use technology..! I apologize; I no more try summarize the sermons, but I just surrender & submit in His presence!

While the whole city was 'stand-still' during the ice storm, they went out, driving on the risky-icy-slippery roads, to pray for me and help me out; I told them 'I am contagious' they said, that is fine! I thought they are crazy.. Yes! They are! For your sake!

While I complained about their leadership style, they exemplified the servant leadership, 'do not follow men', 'just follow Jesus', a better way to Christian Maturity..!

While they were neither my friends, nor my family, but they act like one, leaving room for me to fail but learn, leaving room for me to be 'me', but follow Jesus!

While I stand 'TALL' and look down on them (some times), I realize the very reason I stand tall today, because they knelt and BEND down for me in their personal closet and prayed for me; And they continue to do it for others...! That is why I still see them kneeling in His presence..!

While I HIGHLIGHT their 'one' weakness among their 100 strengths, they were waiting to compliment me for the ONE thing I do right among the 100 things I do wrong! They are still waiting...! (Why did my eyes get wet as I write this....? They deserve my respect!)

While I am impatient, in-tolerant, proud and lethargic, they were patient, tolerant, and humble, in not just accepting me as I am, but continue to support me and teaching me 'His Purpose' for me...

This song comes to my mind when I think about them...

How beautiful the hands that served
The wine and the bread and the sons of the earth
How beautiful the feet that walked
The long dusty roads and the hill to the cross - Twila Paris

They deserve our appreciation -everyday, they deserve our respect -all the time, they deserve our love un-conditionally, they deserve our helping hand- to lift up others, they deserve our support- in their loneliness, they deserve our faithfulness -in serving, they deserve our commitment to Christ ...after all that was their only aim to make us go there..!

Now it is your turn....! Take your phone and call them or take a blank sheet of paper and fill it with your heart felt thanks... a few tear drops...may wet the papers and I think it is fine, they are used to those moisture papers... ! To Any Pastors or missionaries who touched your life...! They deserve a 'THANK YOU' from you!

The Disciple and His Common Sense

Imanuel G. Christian
October 2011

For the past few months we have been thinking about the ways to know the will of God for a particular situation in life. This month we will deal with common sense. How does common sense come into the picture as we try to discern the will of God? This article will be the last in this series (If you would like to get all of the previous five articles together, let me know).

Common sense means sound and prudent judgment in practical matters; the basic level of practical knowledge that we all need to help us to live in a reasonable and safe way. God has given
common sense to every one of us, and it is our responsibility to use it for sensible living. When we want to know the will of God, we have to use our common sense. In our past articles we have noted that the Word of God is the most basic tool to help us know the will of God. But that does not mean that we have to totally lay aside our common sense.

The Word of God tells us to use our common sense. Peter says, “Prepare your minds for action” (1 Peter 1:13), and, “The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray” (1 Peter 4:7). In both of these verses the original meaning is to use discernment, right judgment which we would call common sense. Similarly, Paul says that the grace of God teaches us, “to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:12). And, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7), where self-discipline means living sensibly, with careful thinking.

The prophet Isaiah gives a beautiful example of the common sense of farmers. A farmer knows when to plow, what kind of seed to sow in what kind of soil. He knows that different crops require different farming techniques because, “His God instructs him and teaches him the right way”. He uses God-given common sense (Isaiah 28:24-29). Similarly, by common sense we know the proper time for different activities, how to behave, what to say and what not to say, and how to relate to people in different situations.

By common sense we know that during the extreme cold of the winter we should not go out without wearing heavy warm clothes. But if we go out with those clothes during the extreme heat of the summer, people would think we are out of our minds. If we are sick we have to consult a doctor. If we are a student we have to study hard to get good grades. We have to avoid some situations that put us either in physical or moral danger. These are things we know through our common sense and we do not need to know the will of God in such matters.

The Bible does not give any help in the matters which we can decide simply by using our common sense; it leaves those things to us to decide. For example, when an angel took Peter out of the prison, they passed two sets of guards and came to the iron gate which miraculously opened and Peter went out of the jail. At that moment the angel left Peter and disappeared. Now Peter was on his own and he had to use his common sense to decide what he should do next and where to go (Acts 12:5-19).

However, as it has been said, common sense is not very common. We all have done and said things that do not always make sense. Our foot is more often in our mouth than on the solid ground of our common sense! Think of a criminal who called a bank telling them to put all their cash in a sack for him and he would pick it up in fifteen minutes. Or, a Wal-Mart customer who filed a police report about his I-pod being stolen from his car in the parking lot. He had locked the doors, put the windows up, and set the alarm, but had left the top of his convertible open and the I-pod sitting on the passenger seat. Or, the jury that awarded two million dollars to a lady who carelessly spilled hot coffee in her lap while driving; and now there is a warning on McDonald coffee cups “Warning—Hot Coffee”!

Even if we are wise enough to use common sense most of the time, man’s common sense, like we noted in the case of man’s conscience, has limitations in knowing and following the will of God. The main problem is that our common sense has been trained in the wisdom of the world and many a time we consider everything in the way that the world thinks, thinking in terms of the gains in this life rather than in relation to eternal values. As Paul writes, “The sinful mind is hostile toward God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). That is why Solomon says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (common sense). Do not be wise in your own eyes” (Proverbs 3:5, 7). But be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil (Romans 16:19).

We need to train our common sense according to the principles, ideals and morals of the Word of God rather than of the world. Not to confirm to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds so we can test and approve what is pleasing in the sight of God (Romans 12:2).

God sometimes leads us in a way that may not make sense to our common sense or even seems outright foolish and contrary to our common sense. Noah’s building of the ark, which took him a hundred and twenty years, must have seemed foolish to everybody around him at the time when people did not even know what “rain” was. Or, it must have seemed foolish to Abraham’s extended family and friends when he totally uprooted himself and left to go to a place he did not know (Hebrews 11:8). Just imagine a friend asking him, “Abraham, where are you going?” and his response, “Well, I don’t really know!”

I was a college professor when I felt led by the Lord to go into full time ministry and applied to Dallas Theological Seminary. The only idea about ministry that I had was to be a pastor, and pastors in India at that time received less than one-third of what I was getting as a professor (today it is less than one-fifth since professors’ salaries have sky-rocketed while pastors’ have not). When I went to the U. S. Consulate to get a student visa and I told this to the man there in response to his questions about my future plans, he shook his head and said, ”This doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone leave a well-paying job and spend four years of his life in further training to get a job that pays only one-third of what he is getting now?” They denied me the visa. Only after I wrote a long letter (in whatever broken English I knew then!) giving testimony of my conversion and commitment to the ministry, and the Seminary wrote a recommendation letter to them based on my written testimony sent to the Seminary earlier, did I get the visa. (I am convinced that those two letters, by God’s providence, must have fallen into the hands of a believer in the consulate office!). I am sure we can find examples without number from many a servants of God where what they were doing seemed foolish to the people around them.

There are many things in the Word of God and in a believer’s life that do not match with human common sense. “The message of the cross is foolishness” to the people of the world, and, “the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2:14).

And so, as we live in the world we do have to use our God given common sense. We cannot jump off a cliff just because we know God can and does take care of His children. But we have to remember that the things of God are from out of this world and they are not always discerned by our common sense (Isaiah 55:8-9). We must always live by faith and not by sight (1 Corinthians 5:7) and trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own common sense.