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Every Believer’s Calling, The Ministry of Reconciliation

by Solomon Aroboto | 22 .06. 04 | 2013 Daily Devotionals, Daily Devotional, Resources

2 Corinthians 5:18 –20 – Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the Word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.

Friend, apart from the fivefold ministry of the apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists and teachers, there is a ministry that every believer is called into; that is the ministry of reconciliation. We are saved to be saviours. God has given us all the assignment to reconcile the world back to Him. Most people think that God is mad at them but this is not the case. A lot of people think that God is keeping record of their sins and that He is waiting for an appropriate time to punish and destroy them. In some cases, people got the message of the Kingdom on a platter of condemnation and judgment of an angry God. While I am not saying that God loves sin or that we should tolerate sin, I am saying that God loves the sinner but hates his sin because sin causes a separation between the sinner and God. Therefore, He made a remedy by erasing sin and put the punishment we deserved onto His son and procured total salvation for all of us. Glory to God!

Our ministry is to go out and tell this story to people, to paint the right picture of God on the canvas of people’s soul. God is not the one that left man; it was man that left God. God did not break up His relationship with man; it was man that broke his relationship with God. This ‘enmity’ between man and God is one-sided. Man chose to become the enemy of God but God remained faithful and found a way to reconnect with man. It is therefore, every believer’s ministry to reconcile people back to God by telling them that God is not mad at them and that He is not holding their sins against them. We are to make them see the provision of salvation set on the platter of mercy and grace and not on the platter of judgement and condemnation.

This is the reason why we are called the light and salt of the earth. We are to give the world divine guidance and stop the decay that is in it. The reason why God left us on the earth after our salvation is so that we can spread the good news and help as many people as possible to enter into this great and new life that God has provided for them. A major purpose of our salvation would be defeated if we don’t impact our world with the message of Christ. While we are not of this world, we are sent into the world to make disciples. Therefore, let’s get going about our Father’s business; let’s enter into our role as peacemakers between the world and God.

For Further Study

John 3:16-17, Romans 6:23

Personal declaration for the day

As I am a minister of reconciliation, today, I will be a good steward of God’s good news to everyone I meet.

Questions for you to reflect on

Are you aware that you have the ministry of reconciliation?

Are you aware that the ministry of reconciliation is for all believers and that there are no exceptions?

When do you intend to answer the call of God?

Finding The Lord

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 KJV)

But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. (Deuteronomy 4:29 KJV)

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV)

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." (Matthew 13:44 KJV)

Luke 15:6-7 “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Ephesians 2:1-2 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

Luke 15:31-32 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”

Luke 15:9-10 “And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Luke 15:4-5 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”

Jesus is The Lord!

The Unbiblical Myth of “Full Time Ministry”

The following text is recovered from Wayback Machine ...

Original source:  https://togetherforisrael.org/the-unbiblical-myth-of-full-time-ministry/

I want to put a challenge before you – are you ready? Okay, here we go! Pull out your Strong’s Concordance and look up the term ‘full time ministry’. I’m willing to award a prize to the one who finds the most references. As a matter of fact, I’ll gladly give an expensive gift to anyone who can produce one instance where that exact terminology is used anywhere in the original languages!

Let me save you some time. There is not one person in the entire Bible that is referred to as being in full time ministry! Isn’t it amazing how frequently we hear the phrase ‘full-time ministry’ and it’s not even found once in the Word of God? Perhaps we need to ask the Lord for a more Biblical paradigm.

Imagine the following scenario: There are two 30-year-old men standing in front of you. One of them is serving in a third world country and has diligently raised support so that he and his family could serve as missionaries for the next five years. The other man is a fireman in a city that is growing. This man is committed to being a Godly husband to his wife and father to his children. The amount of money that he makes is irrelevant to him as long as he keeps the Lord first in his life and is a witness for Jesus every moment of the day.

With the above scenario in mind, it’s unfortunate, according to the way many of us look at things, that the man in the third world country is considered in ‘full-time ministry’ whereas the fireman would be considered working a ‘secular job’ (by the way, the term ‘secular job’ isn’t found in the Bible either!).

Although this may sound a little confrontational and may ruffle some feathers, I believe that the term ‘full time ministry’ needs to be entirely eradicated from our vocabulary due to the unbiblical connotation that it portrays! Because it’s Jesus that has commissioned us, we are all called to be His witnesses whether we serve as a pastor or a plumber. The Lord doesn’t look down from heaven and recognize us by whether we’re in full-time ministry or not! We’re all His children and called to serve Him!

I’m continually grieved when I run into people who have given into the whisper of the enemy, who has convinced them that they’re not living up to their potential because they are settling for working a job that this age considers secular. There is a whole group of people who are reading this right now who feel like failures because they graduated from a Bible college or a school of ministry and are not employed by a ‘church’ or ‘ministry’.

Think of Moses for a moment…was he ever employed by a church or ministry? He lived within the confines of Godless Pharaoh’s house for the first 40 years of his life and then worked his tail off as a shepherd on the back side of the desert for the next 40 years. He was never written up in a magazine for his potential as one of the up-and-coming history makers of his generation. How sad it is that if he were alive today, many of our modern-day leaders would pay no attention to him because he wasn’t ‘in the ministry’. As a matter of fact, depending on where he went to church, he might even be rebuked for wasting the best years of his life!

Just this morning I was on the phone with a graduate from a ministry school who really felt that the Lord would one day have his family serving as missionaries in a foreign country. So, he quit his job (which, by the way, was a great source of income for his growing family) and prepared to make the next step toward the mission field. I listened intently as he shared with me that it seemed like the Lord was calling him back to his previous job because the time was not yet right to move overseas.

At this point, some of you might say, “Well, he just needs to step out in faith and do it because God’s word says, ‘Go!’” Although there is great truth in that statement, there is yet an underlying truth that requires us to not abort the preparation process so that when we do go, we are not going with our own power, but rather in the power of the One who has commissioned us.

It’s amazing to me that Jesus Himself, the Son of God, didn’t launch into His ultimate calling until He was thirty years of age! Looking at that from a worldly kind of wisdom, you might say that some of those youthful years could have been better spent seeing the dead raised and the blind eyes opened. After all, He would have gotten a tremendous head start on a ‘successful ministry’ if He began earlier.

Amazingly, when the Lord trumpeted from heaven that “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”, Jesus had not yet done anything that modern-day Christianity would refer to as ‘ministry’. God was pleased with His Son simply because He was a Son. That, my friends, is a truth that we must all embrace!

The value of our lives to our Creator is not based on what we do but rather on who we are! I want to encourage all of you that Father God loves you not for what you can produce for Him but simply because you are His son and daughter. Our ultimate eternal destiny on this earth is to glorify the Lord by being a demonstration of the Kingdom of God. That must take place as we preach, as we wait on tables, as we drive a taxi cab, as we teach kindergarten, as we practice law, as we counsel, as we mow lawns, as we break bread together, as we fish, as we fight fires, as we sell real estate, as we flip hamburgers, as we raise our children, as we…

I think you’re getting the picture. Be a demonstration of the Kingdom of God wherever it is that He has you serving. And, if you have yet to see His promises for your life fulfilled, keep hanging on to those things which He has spoken, remembering that “faithful is He who calls you, He will also bring it to pass”!

Complete Sayings of Jesus in Chronological Order

Pride

This is one of the natures of Satan that we wrestle with (Ephesians 6:12).

Believer in Christ:  You are NOT pride.

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My name is Pride. I am a cheater.

  

I cheat you of your God-given destiny…

because you demand your own way.

  

I cheat you of contentment…

because you “deserve better than this.”

I cheat you of knowledge…

because you already know it all.

I cheat you of healing…

because you are too full of you to forgive.

I cheat you of holiness…

because you refuse to admit when you are wrong.

I cheat you of vision…

because you’d rather look in the mirror than out a window.

I cheat you of genuine friendship…

because nobody’s going to know the real you.

I cheat you of love…

because real romance demands sacrifice.

I cheat you of greatness in heaven…

because you refuse to wash another’s feet on earth.

I cheat you of God’s glory…

because I convinced you to seek your own.

My name is Pride. I am a cheater.

You like me because you think I’m always looking out for you.

Untrue.

I’m looking to make a fool of you.

God has so much for you, I admit, but don’t worry…

If you stick with me you’ll never know.

<From Praying God’s Word: Breaking Free From Spiritual Strongholds by Beth Moore>

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I command for pride to depart from me, my family and our home and pray that God will fill that empty space with His holy spirit and humble me to my knees so that I can be a servant after God’s own heart.  Amen.

SOURCE:  The Princess Diaries Blog

INFORMATIONAL: What is "Pure Religion and Pure Secularism?"

In response to this article...

It sometimes helps to know the antonym of something in order to grasp the definition.  To be "purely secular" would be to be entirely opposite of "purely religious."

The following is the definition of "pure religion" according to the Christian Bible (the foundation of the Christian faith).

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."  (James 1:27 KJV)

So, according to the Christian faith, the definition of pure secularism (the opposite of pure religion) would be something like this:  "Pure secularism and completely defiled before God and the Father is this, To never visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to become completely spotted from the world [to fully indulge in every possible sinful practice of the world - adultery, fornication, murder, theft, abuse, rebellion, etc...]."

According to the Christian faith, the only way to become right with God is to receive Jesus Christ and to become born again.  Reference The Book of John - Chapters 1 through 3.

I hope this helps.  I wish you ALL THE BEST!

What Various People Have Written About False Conversions In The Church

Four Characteristics of a False Convert | The Cripplegate

True and False Conversion | Living Waters

How can I detect a false conversion? - Got Questions?

False Conversions: The #1 Epidemic in the Modern Church

False Repentance Leads to False Conversions - The Gospel Coalition

FALSE CONVERSION - Bible Research