Prayed for you all this AM (5:30 and 6:30) and will do so daily until you all return next Tuesday. I was reading Acts 17:22-31 this AM and it was right in line with your all and your trip to Haiti and your mission. Check it out :Acts 17:22-31 (New International Version)
22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
29"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
Your "Men of Athens" are the Haitians. See the attachment from Today in the Word below as well on these verses :
As believers, our self-esteem can and should be directly linked to our relationship to God. In today’s passage, Paul is giving a speech in Athens, a city filled with idols (v. 16). Paul stressed the distinction between being religious and knowing the true God, and he detailed how his own God was the one true God who created the heaven and the earth (vv. 23-24).
This God is not “served by human hands” (v. 25). In other words, God does not need us in order to survive. He made us and made the world—what could He need? Yet, in this passage, Paul revealed what God desires. God made all of this “so that men would seek him” (v. 27). God loves us, but He does not manipulate our minds and hearts. He made us, and it is His desire that we would want to know Him, to find Him, and to have a relationship with Him. He does not view us as puppets on His string.
“For in him we live and move and have our being” (v. 28). Our heritage is directly linked to the divine Creator. It is natural for offspring to want to know their parents. It is natural, then, that since we are God’s offspring, we will want to find our image in Him. Only in God—not in our own accomplishments, possessions, personality, or family history—can we find the source of our true identity.
God bless you all!!!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
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