THE GOOD SAMARITAN
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
A country preacher
went looking for a job and had this conversation with the interview committee:
‘do
you know much about the bible?’
‘oh yeah i know a lot, through and
through’ ‘What’s your favourite book?’
‘The book of Mark’
'What’s your favourite part?’
'The parable of the Good Samaritan’
‘Can you tell us about it?’
‘Yea, it goes this way. Once there was this man travelling
from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among the thorns, and the thorns sprung
up and choked him. And as he went on he didn’t have any money and then he met
the queen of Sheba and she gave him a thousand talents of gold and a thousand
changes of raiment. And he got into a chariot and drove furiously, and when he
was driving under a big juniper tree, his hair caught under the limb of that
tree, and he hung there many days and the ravens brought him food to eat and
water to drink, and he ate 5000 loaves of bread and two fishes. One night when
he was hanging there, his wife Delilah came and cut off his hair and he dropped
and fell on stony ground; But he got up and it began to rain, and it rained 40
days and 40 nights, and he hid himself in a cave and he lived on locust and
honey.
Then he went on till he
met a servant who said, come let’s have supper together, and he made an excuse
and said, No! I’ve married a wife and cannot go, and the servant went out to
the highway and hedges and urged him to come in. After supper he went on and
came down to Jericho, and when he looked up he saw that old queen Jezebel
sitting down high up on that window and she laughed at him, and he said throw
her down out there and they threw her down. And he said throw her down again
and they threw her down 70x7 times, and of the fragments that remained they
picked up 12 baskets full, besides women and children; and they said blessed
are the piece makers, now whose wife do you think she will be on that judgement
day…’
Very funny, but Quite
a distortion isn’t it. How much more when the word of God is distorted to lure
somebody into a commitment?
Recently, we hear stories of
Pastors & prominent Men of God who have messed up, fallen to the temptation
of fame, sex and silver, dragging souls down with them and ultimately away from
God. This makes me really sad. As I was
listening to a sermon, by Ravi Zacharias on the tests of ministry he mentioned
the challenges and tests facing preachers, but I began to reminisce beyond the
output, mistakes, interpretation and misinterpretation of ministers and
ministry, I thought about the pew, me and you. 7 For what gives you the right to make
such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything
you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift? 1 Corinthians 4:7
This faith, our gift ,we claim God commended to us, do we
yet understand it? Are we really for real? How much of God do we know or carry?
Can you stand to defend your faith? Or are merely a caricature, like the
country preacher in the story above?
And so I come to
you not with the enticing words of men but words from within me, of
soul-searching, of a heart broken, contrite, and hungry for righteousness worried
for my soul and yours…
This
is not the time to look to any man, for Christ made the invitation open. Let us
therefore strip ourselves of every limiting factor, of sin, , ignorance,
distorted-mindsets, fear, illicit pleasures, daunting doubts, trends, time-killers, new-age beliefs etc , ‘Don’t you realize that in a race
everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! 1 Corinthians 9:24’ . Run towards your goal, Heaven! Bring your mind , body
and emotions under the control of the Holy Spirit, read your bible, pray , do
it for the eternal prize; and win we shall! John 3:16
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