Remember Lilly? Someone contacting me wanting to help her, so I called her to check on her current situation. On the outside she is still in need of $1300 to stay in her current apartment. She has paid a few hundred to stay in thus far, but the apartment continues to pressure her for the money. On the inside she is a picture of peace, and she so gets it.
In addition to her gratitude for someone caring, she said, "I am so humbled. As bad as my situation is there are so many more who have it worse. Like with the fires. These people worked all there lives to have something and it was destroyed." (For those outside of Texas we are in a drouth that is accompanied with massive wildfires that have destroyed millions of acres and thousands of homes.)
We talked some more and then was the next comment I wrote down. She said, "This is going to sound crazy in my situation but God is really dealing with me on tithing. I have contacted the salvation army and really want 10% of whatever I get to go to help the fire victims."
Does anyone get it as well as she does. A little obedience to show someone a reflection of Christ's love, and a persons whole spiritual world has changed. It was a spark to move a single mom from down and out, to humbled gratitude and a real walk with God. If only we all could get it. If today would would recognize God loving us, so that we can love someone else.
Real encounters with the love of Christ produces real, spontaneous results. These results are not emotional highs, they are not calculated behavior based on intellectual practice, rather these results often flow out of the heart. Like Jesus said, as streams of living water.
T Austin-Sparks wrote, "There is a vast amount of intellectual comprehension of truth and doctrine which is not touching the situation, not meeting the need... A person may know Scripture most thoroughly and yet be the most awkward, cantankerous and peevish person in daily life; or go into business relationships, drive a hard bargain and send another man to the wall for his own ends. You may have all knowledge and yet profit nothing. It is the natural man receiving on the plane of the natural man. It is mental apprehension of Divine truth, and it is not alive, it is not the 'water of Life, clear as crystal.'"
Lilly is living in the "mental apprehension of Divine truth." She is drinking the "water of Life."
I want to close with a special thanks to Jim Spivey. He has been the most recent and persistent example of Christ' love in my life. There are many who are a reflection of Christ in my life, but today I honor him the most by acknowledging to the world that his example of love has turned my world upside down for Christ. He is my friend, my mentor, and brother in arms. Special thanks to Mark for the introduction.
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