Take-Aways

 Last evening was the concluding service in a week of revivals meetings at our church. Kevin Hurst was the speaker and delivered excellent messages. We may be a tiny bit biased because he is our nephew and grew up in our congregation. But it's more than that. He is a deep thinker and dug to the root of the subject. Here are a few of my take-aways from the week.

1. "You don't HAVE a soul. You ARE a soul and have a body."

Because we are temporal human beings we tend to think of things in the here and now. The fact is that we are eternal souls housed in a physical body. The soul continues to live on after the body dies. Where it goes depends on the choices we made while the soul was in the body.

2. "Be an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." Although this was written to a young man, Timothy, it applies to every believer of any age. Professing to be a Christian isn't enough. We must live it out in every area of life---in the words we say, the lifestyle we live, the way we treat other people, in our attitudes, in difficult circumstances, and moral purity. Those five words encompass every area of life. And living it out takes a lifetime.

3. Joseph is one of the few men in the Bible that nothing bad is said about him. His faith was built on a solid foundation and made it possible for him to (a) resist temptation (b) endure suffering (c) forgive quickly. According to human reasoning, he had every right to pity himself and give up on God. But he was faithful and eventually saw the big picture. He told his brothers, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good." It is not wrong to be tempted or to wonder why. It only becomes sin when we yield to the temptation or doubt God.

4.  It only took one sin for Adam and Eve to be exiled from their garden home. No amount of good deeds could buy it back. We cannot save ourselves with any amount of good deeds. We need someone who can forgive our sins and save us from our foolish selves.

5. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

(James Russell Lowell)