"Then Paul answered, "What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." Acts 21:13
What we are willing to suffer for the gospel is the test of our love for it. Recently, I watched a video of a group of people who went to a place in Ivory Coast, where everyone goes about naked, and if visitors wanted to have any communion with them, they had to come naked. Every effort to enter into that community with the gospel failed, finally, they decided to go into the place naked in order to be able to preach the gospel to a naked people.
There, God's power was manifested, and the god that the people of that community worshipped was broken down by the power of God, and the entire people, about one thousand, four hundred, of that community gave their lives to Christ when they saw the awesome power of God. But this would not have happened if a group of believers did not despise the shame of nakedness, and preached the gospel a dying community.
You may be horrified at the hearing of this story, but when you pause and ponder on what it took our Saviour to make salvation possible for us, you cannot but agree with the apostle Paul that to win all men, he became all things. On the cross, we are told of Jesus that He despised the shame. Ehat shame, you may ask. It was the shame of being stripped barely naked before the gazing eyes of His haters. If He did this to save us, what, you may ask, shall be too humiliating for us, His saved one, to do in order to advance the cause of the gospel, for which our Saviour died such a shameful death of the cross, to make possible.
Yours may not be becoming naked to preach the gospel, but each of us will at one time or the other, be placed in an awkward position that requires us to do some awkward things in order to be able to preach the gospel to a dying people. When that time comes, it is my prayer that, like these brave missionaries, we will not count it strange to do whatever it may require to make the gospel known to a dying world.
Toni
There, God's power was manifested, and the god that the people of that community worshipped was broken down by the power of God, and the entire people, about one thousand, four hundred, of that community gave their lives to Christ when they saw the awesome power of God. But this would not have happened if a group of believers did not despise the shame of nakedness, and preached the gospel a dying community.
You may be horrified at the hearing of this story, but when you pause and ponder on what it took our Saviour to make salvation possible for us, you cannot but agree with the apostle Paul that to win all men, he became all things. On the cross, we are told of Jesus that He despised the shame. Ehat shame, you may ask. It was the shame of being stripped barely naked before the gazing eyes of His haters. If He did this to save us, what, you may ask, shall be too humiliating for us, His saved one, to do in order to advance the cause of the gospel, for which our Saviour died such a shameful death of the cross, to make possible.
Yours may not be becoming naked to preach the gospel, but each of us will at one time or the other, be placed in an awkward position that requires us to do some awkward things in order to be able to preach the gospel to a dying people. When that time comes, it is my prayer that, like these brave missionaries, we will not count it strange to do whatever it may require to make the gospel known to a dying world.
Toni
