In my online ministry at www.christianbusinessguy.com over the past 2 1/4 years now I have had the opportunity to provide words of counsel, advice, help in various forms, and ministry on various topics to a lot of people.
I have had people contact me who are: Atheists, Witches, Suicidal people, Back-slidden Christians, Heart-broken people, People Seeking to know God, People who needed prayer for a host of reasons, and strong Christians just reaching out.
I often spend a fair amount of time with people initially for a few days or perhaps weeks and I try to be sensitive to what the Lord is saying to them and what his Word says about their situation. I enjoy these times and I find this very fulfilling. My true hope is that people will find immediate help in the Lord leading to a life of absolute surrender to Jesus Christ- that is always my hope and goal.
I do find however that in many cases people get initial encouragement from me- through the Lord- and they have just enough of the Holy Spirit touch them and they have just enough of the Word that it solves the immediate emergency and makes them comfortable enough just to move on with their lives without having to absolutely commit to Christ heart, soul, and strength.
This is a real tragedy and we see this taught about by Jesus in the Bible. In Mark 4:3-6 a farmer sows seed and some falls onto hard soil and birds eat that seed and it cannot take root. Later in Mark 4:14-15 Jesus goes on to explain, "The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts."(NKJV) He teaches that the seed is the Word of God and the soil are men's hearts. When someone delivers the seed of God's word and someone's heart is hard Satan can immediately come and take away that Word.
We must all be diligent to not just hear a good sermon, or read a good Bible chapter, but we must put that good Word into practice. Lets pray and ask the Lord to show us how to apply the Word and how to have that sensitive heart that obeys the Holy Spirit.
1 comment:
I really appreciate your ministry, Brian. Thank you for the prayers and encouragement.
I agree that we need to be careful to plant good seeds as we go thru life. Especially online we have to be conscious of what our witness is. I too pray that those I interface with will take the seed and plant it deep in their hearts, and I rejoice that it is God's work from there - that the Holy Spirit will water and nourish it. The Lord is going to do EVERYTHING possible to save EVERY soul.
Int the following text, note the action verbs in the first part - they indicate the conditions upon which the following wonderful promises are made:
"SEEK ye the LORD while He may be found, CALL ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked FORSAKE his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him RETURN unto the LORD...
[promise is next!]
... and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon...So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isaiah 55:6-7, 11.
With love for the unreached,
Mary Ann
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