Bottled Water Ministry

I am plodding along in my new church. I have printed some cards to help ‘reach out’ to people. I often go for a run along the beach in the morning and have started handing out cards to people.

When I get to the beach at 6:30am, there are often people still milling around after being out night clubbing all night. There are western tourists and prostitutes having a last beer from the circle K before getting in a taxi. There is the odd person, who indulged too much passed out on the beach, and there are often groups of people going for a semi-clad, intoxicated swim.

My heart is for them!! I want to reach out to them! I want to tell them about God!

Bringing middle aged couples into the church is great but my heart is for a ministry to the critically ill, those who are so far from God that they actively oppose Him. Those that are partying and using drugs and sleeping with prostitutes and prostituting themselves.

I was there once. I spent the first two thirds of my life COMPLETELY lost. Surely He can use that training. My questions now are ‘how?’, ‘when?’, ‘where?’, ’do I really have the guts?’.

For months now I have been desiring to get up in the middle of the night, take a box of bottled water to the car park where I start my run and just give out free water to the revellers, hoping to do something for God from there. Something has held me back….but I don’t think it will for much longer. Pray for me please.

How many of the people in the Old Testament made it to Heaven?

Here’s a thought I had this morning, ‘How many of the people in the Old Testament made it to Heaven?’

God ‘needs’ us to be righteous so we can enter into heaven. We CANNOT enter and live in heaven if we are tainted by sin. In the Old Testament, being righteous meant obeying the law and yet nobody seemed capable of doing that (from what I can tell.)

The bible says the sacrifices they made were not capable of taking away their sins.

Hebrews 10

 ¹ The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship……..⁴ It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

So how could any of them be eligible to enter heaven? There may have been those who repented of sin and became acceptable to God. Perhaps the people of the bible that we read about as being in good standing with God made it to heaven. BUT what about the rest?

Generations of people, tribe after tribe. Did they all just fall short ?

The bible says our own righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64) but for us living in New Testament times all we have to do is accept Jesus and we get His perfect righteousness. Generations of people, tribe after tribe. God has made it so easy…..and yet so many people aren’t going to make it.

An Analogy For God

This analogy frequently comes to me…

There are ‘physical’, natural laws that cannot be circumnavigated. The law of gravity applies to everything on earth. There is a principal that is the basis for life and it goes like this:

God is like the fire in the picture. We are like the dry leaf. When the two of them come in contact, the leaf will burst into flames and be destroyed. This is because we are tainted by sin. God CANNOT be in the presence of sin. What we need to do to enter into His presence is get soaked in the blood of Jesus. It changes our physical/spiritual state so we do not get consumed by God.

From another perspective it is kind of like the Midas touch. It is not that God wants to destroy us, He can’t help it. Just as anything the King in the story touched turned to gold, anything that enters the presence of God, without the protection of the blood of Jesus, is consumed.